{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_66893/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_66893","id":"gutenberg_66893","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66893","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays","Nobel Prizes in Literature"],"text":"MOUNTAIN PATHS\n\n\n\n\nTHE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK\n\n\nESSAYS\n\n  THE TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE\n  WISDOM AND DESTINY\n  THE LIFE OF THE BEE\n  THE BURIED TEMPLE\n  THE DOUBLE GARDEN\n  THE MEASURE OF THE HOURS\n  ON EMERSON, AND OTHER ESSAYS\n  OUR ETERNITY\n  THE UNKNOWN GUEST\n  THE WRACK OF THE STORM\n  MOUNTAIN PATHS\n\n\nPLAYS\n\n  SISTER BEATRICE, AND ARDIANE AND BARBE BLEUE\n  JOYZELLE, AND MONNA VANNA\n  THE BLUE BIRD, A FAIRY PLAY\n  MARY MAGDALENE\n  P\u00c9LL\u00c9AS AND M\u00c9LISANDE, AND OTHER PLAYS\n  PRINCESS MALEINE\n  THE INTRUDER, AND OTHER PLAYS\n  AGLAVAINE AND SELYSETTE\n  THE MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY\n  THE BETROTHAL; A SEQUEL TO THE BLUE BIRD POEMS\n\n\nHOLIDAY EDITIONS\n\n  OUR FRIEND THE DOG\n  THE SWARM\n  DEATH\n  THOUGHTS FROM MAETERLINCK\n  THE BLUE BIRD\n  THE LIFE OF THE BEE\n  NEWS OF SPRING AND OTHER NATURE STUDIES\n  THE LIGHT BEYOND\n\n\n\n\n  Mountain Paths\n\n  BY\n  MAURICE MAETERLINCK\n\n  _Translated by_\n  ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n\n  NEW YORK\n  DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY\n  1919\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1919\n  BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.\n  _All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  CHAPTER                                  PAGE\n\n      I  THE POWER OF THE DEAD                3\n\n     II  MESSAGES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE      15\n\n    III  BAD NEWS                            31\n\n     IV  THE SOUL OF NATIONS                 41\n\n      V  THE MOTHERS                         51\n\n     VI  THREE UNKNOWN HEROES                59\n\n    VII  WASTED BEAUTIES                     77\n\n   VIII  THE INSECT WORLD                    87\n\n     IX  EVIL-SPEAKING                      123\n\n      X  OF GAMBLING                        133\n\n     XI  THE RIDDLE OF PROGRESS             165\n\n    XII  THE TWO LOBES                      179\n\n   XIII  HOPE AND DESPAIR                   191\n\n    XIV  MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM            201\n\n     XV  HEREDITY AND PREEXISTENCE          213\n\n    XVI  THE GREAT REVELATION               229\n\n   XVII  THE NECESSARY SILENCE              271\n\n  XVIII  KARMA                              281\n\n\n\n\nTHE POWER OF THE DEAD\n\n\n\n\nMOUNTAIN PATHS\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE POWER OF THE DEAD\n\n\n1\n\nIn that curious little masterpiece _A Beleagured City_, Mrs. Oliphant\nshows us the dead of a provincial town suddenly waxing indignant over\nthe conduct and the morals of those inhabiting the town which they\nfounded. They rise up in rebellion, invest the houses, the streets,\nthe market-places and, by the pressure of their innumerable multitude,\nall-powerful though invisible, repulse the living, thrust them out\nof doors and, setting a strict watch, permit them to return to their\nroof-trees only after a treaty of peace and penitence has purified\ntheir hearts, atoned for their offences and ensured a more worthy\nfuture.\n\nUndoubtedly a great truth underlies this fiction, which appears to us\nfar-fetched because we perceive only material and ephemeral realities.\nThe dead life and move in our midst far more really and effectually\nthan the most venturesome imagination could depict. It is very doubtful\nwhether they remain in their graves. It even seems increasingly certain\nthat they never allowed themselves to be confined there. Under the\ntombstones where we believe them to lie imprisoned there are only a few\nashes, which are no longer theirs, which they have abandoned without\nregret and which in all probability they no longer deign to remember.\nAll that was themselves continues to have its being in our midst. How\nand under what aspect? After all these thousands, perhaps millions of\nyears, we do not yet know; and no religion has been able to tell us\nwith satisfying certainty, though all have striven to do so; but we\nmay, by means of certain tokens, hope to learn.\n\n\n2\n\nWithout further considering a mighty but obscure truth, which it is\nfor the moment impossible to state precisely or to render palpable,\nlet us concern ourselves with one which cannot be disputed. As I have\nsaid elsewhere, whatever our religious faith may be, there is at any\nrate one place where our dead cannot perish, where they continue to\nexist as really as when they were in the flesh and often more actively;\nand this living abiding-place, this consecrated spot, which for those\nwhom we have lost becomes Heaven or Hell according as we draw nearer\nto or travel farther from their thoughts and their desires, is within\nourselves.\n\nAnd their thoughts and their desires are always higher than our own. It\nis, therefore, by uplifting ourselves that we approach them. It is we\nwho must take the first steps, for they can no longer descend, whereas\nit is always possible for us to rise; for the dead, whatever they may\nhave been in life, become better than the best of us. The least worthy\nof them, in shedding the body, have shed its vices, its littlenesses,\nits weaknesses, which soon pass from our memory as well; and the spirit\nalone remains, which is pure in every man and able to desire only what\nis good. There are no wicked dead, because there are no wicked souls.\nThis is why, as we purify ourselves, we restore life to those who were\nno more and transform our memory, which they inhabit, into Heaven.\n\n\n3\n\nAnd what was always true of all the dead is far more true to-day, when\nonly the best are chosen for the tomb. In the region which we believe\nto be under the earth, which we call the Kingdom of the Shades and\nwhich in reality is the ethereal region and the Kingdom of Light, there\nare at this moment disturbances no less profound than those which we\nhave experienced on the surface of the earth. The young dead have\ninvaded it from every side; and since the beginning of this world they\nhave never been so numerous, so full of energy and zeal. Whereas in\nthe customary sequence of the years the dwelling-place of those who\nleave us receives only weary and exhausted lives, there is not one in\nthis incomparable host who, to borrow Pericles\u2019 expression, \u201chas not\ndeparted from life at the height of glory.\u201d Not one of them but has\ngone up, not down, to his death clad in the greatest sacrifice that\nman can make for an idea that cannot die. All that we have hitherto\nbelieved, all that we have striven to attain beyond ourselves, all that\nhas lifted us to the level at which we stand, all that has overcome\nthe evil days and the evil instincts of human nature: all this could\nhave been no more than lies and illusions if such men as these, such\na mass of merit and of glory, were really annihilated, had for ever\ndisappeared, were for ever useless and voiceless, for ever without\ninfluence in a world to which they have given life.\n\n\n4\n\nIt is hardly possible that this could be so as regards the external\nsurvival of the dead; but it is absolutely certain that it is not so\nas regards their survival in ourselves. Here nothing is lost and no\none perishes. Our memories are to-day peopled by a multitude of heroes\nstruck down in the flower of their youth and very different from the\npale and languid cohort of the past, composed almost wholly of the sick\nand the old, who had already ceased to exist before leaving the earth.\nWe must tell ourselves that now, in every one of our homes, both in our\ncities and in the country-side, both in the palace and in the meanest\nhovel, there lives and reigns a young dead man in the glory of his\nstrength. He fills the poorest, darkest dwelling with a splendour of\nwhich it had never ventured to dream. His constant presence, imperious\nand inevitable, diffuses and maintains a religion and ideas which it\nhad never known before, hallows everything around it, makes the eyes\nlook higher, prevents the spirit from descending, purifies the air\nthat is breathed and the speech that is held and the thoughts that are\nmustered there and, little by little, ennobles and uplifts the whole\npeople on a scale of unexampled vastness.\n\n\n5\n\nSuch dead as these have a power as profound, as fruitful as life and\nless precarious. It is terrible that this experience should have been\nmade, for it is the most pitiless and the first in such enormous masses\nthat mankind has undergone; but, now that the ordeal is over, we shall\nsoon gather the most unexpected fruits. It will not be long before we\nsee the differences widen and the destinies diverge between the nations\nwhich have acquired all these dead and all this glory and those which\nwere deprived of them; and we shall perceive with amazement that the\nnations which have lost the most are those which have kept their riches\nand their men. There are losses which are inestimable gains; and there\nare gains whereby the future is lost. There are dead whom the living\ncannot replace and the mere thought of whom accomplishes things which\nour bodies cannot perform. There are dead whose energy surpasses death\nand recovers life; and we are almost every one of us at this moment the\nmandataries of a being greater, nobler, graver, wiser and more truly\nliving than ourselves. With all those who accompany him, he will be our\njudge, if it be true that the dead weigh the soul of the living and\nthat our happiness depends on their verdict. He will be our guide and\nour protector, for it is the first time, since history has revealed its\nmisfortunes to us, that man has felt so great a host of such mighty\ndead soaring above his head and speaking within his heart.\n\nWe shall live henceforward under their laws, which will be more just\nbut not more severe nor more cheerless than ours; for it is a mistake\nto suppose that the dead love nothing but gloom: they love only that\njustice and that truth which are the eternal forms of happiness.\n\nFrom the depths of this justice and this truth in which they are\nall immersed, they will help us to destroy the great falsehoods of\nexistence; for war and death, if they sow innumerable miseries and\nmisfortunes, have at least the merit of destroying as many lives as\nthey occasion evils. And all the sacrifices which they have made for us\nwill have been in vain--and this is not possible--if they do not first\nof all bring about the fall of the lies on which we live and which it\nis not necessary to name, for each of us knows his own and is ashamed\nof them and will be eager to make an end of them.\n\nThey will teach us, before all else, from the depths of our hearts\nwhich are their living tombs, to love those who outlive them, since it\nis in them alone that they wholly exist.\n\n\n\n\nMESSAGES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nMESSAGES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE\n\n\n1\n\nSir Oliver Lodge is one of the most distinguished men of learning in\nour day. He is also one of the oldest, most active and most prominent\nmembers of that well-known Society for Psychical Research which,\nfounded in 1882, has ever since striven to study with irreproachable\nscientific precision all the wonderful, inexplicable, occult and\nsupernatural phenomena which have always baffled and still elude\nthe comprehension of mankind. In addition to his purely scientific\nworks, of which, not being qualified to judge, I do not speak, he is\nthe author of some extremely remarkable books, such as _Man and the\nUniverse_, _The Ether of Space_ and _The Survival of Man_, in which\nthe loftiest and most daring metaphysical speculations are constantly\ncontrolled by the most prudent, wise and steadfast common sense.\n\nSir Oliver Lodge, therefore, is at the same time a philosopher and a\npractical, working scientist, accustomed to scientific methods which\ndo not readily allow him to go astray; he has, in a word, one of the\nbest-balanced brains that we could hope to meet; and he is convinced\nthat the dead do not die and that they are able to communicate with\nus. He has tried to make us share his conviction in _The Survival of\nMan_. I am not sure that he has quite succeeded. True, he gives us\na certain number of extraordinary facts, but they are facts which,\nin the last resort, can be explained by the unconscious intervention\nof intelligences other than those of the dead. He does not bring us\nthe irrefutable proof, such as we should consider, for instance,\nthe revelation of an incident, a detail, a piece of information so\nabsolutely unknown to any living creature that it could come only from\na spirit no longer of this world. We must admit, however, that such a\nproof is, as he says, as difficult to conceive as to provide.\n\n\n2\n\nSir Oliver\u2019s youngest son, Raymond, was born in 1889, became an\nengineer and enlisted for the duration of the war in September, 1914.\nHe was sent out to Flanders early in the spring of 1915; and, on the\n14th of September of the same year, before Ypres, while the company\nunder his command was leaving the front-line trench, he was hit in the\nleft side by a splinter of a shell; and he died a few hours later.\n\nHe was, as a photograph shows us, one of those admirable young British\nsoldiers who are the perfect type of a robust, fresh, joyous humanity,\nclean and bright, and whose death seems the more cruel and the more\nincredible as it annihilates a greater aggregate of strength, hope and\nbeauty.\n\nHis father has dedicated to his memory a volume entitled, _Raymond, or\nLife and Death_; and we are at first somewhat bewildered at seeing\nthat it is not, as one might expect, a book of lamentation, regrets and\ntears, but the accurate, deliberately impassive and at times almost\ncheerful report of a man of learning who thrusts aside his sorrow so\nthat he may see clearly before him, wrestles with the thought of death\nand beholds the rising dawn of an immense and very strange hope.\n\n\n3\n\nI will not linger over the first part of the volume, which aims at\nmaking us acquainted with Raymond Lodge. It contains some forty letters\nwritten in the trenches, the testimony of his brother-officers\u2019\ndevotion to him, details of his death and so on. The letters, I may\nsay in passing, are charmingly vivid and marked by a delicate and\ndelightful humour whose only object is to reassure those who are not\nthemselves in danger. I have not time to dwell upon them; and they are\nnot what most interests us here.\n\nBut the second part, which Sir Oliver Lodge calls _Supernormal\nPortion_, passes from the life that exists on the surface of our earth\nand introduces us into a very different world.\n\nIn the very first lines, the author reminds us that he has \u201cmade no\nsecret of his conviction, not merely that personality persists, but\nthat its continued existence is more entwined with the life of every\nday than has been generally imagined; that there is no real breach\nof continuity between the dead and the living; and that methods of\nintercommunion across what has seemed to be a gulf can be set going in\nresponse to the urgent demand of affection; that in fact, as Diotima\ntold Socrates (_Symposium_, 202 and 203), \u2018Love bridges the Chasm.\u2019\u201d\n\nSir Oliver Lodge, then, is persuaded that his son, though dead, has\nnot ceased to exist and that he has not gone far from those who love\nhim. Raymond, in fact, seeks to communicate with his father as early\nas eleven days after his death. We know that these communications or\nso-called communications from beyond the grave--let us not prejudge\nthe issue for the moment--are made through the agency of a medium who\nis or believes himself to be inspired or possessed by the deceased or\nby a familiar spirit speaking in his name and repeating what the latter\nreveals to him. The medium conveys his information either orally or by\nautomatic writing, or again, although this is very rare in the present\ninstance, by table-turning. But I will pass over these preliminaries,\nwhich would carry us too far, and come straight to the communication\nwhich is, I think, the most astonishing of all and perhaps the only\none that cannot be explained, or at least is exceedingly difficult to\nexplain, by the intervention of the living.\n\nAbout the end of August, 1915, that is to say, not many days before\nhis death, Raymond, who, as we have seen, was near Ypres, had been\nphotographed with the officers of his battalion by a travelling\nphotographer. On the 27th of September following, in the course of a\nsitting with the medium Peters, the spirit speaking by Peters\u2019 mouth\nsaid, suddenly:\n\n\u201cYou have several portraits of this boy. Before he went away you had\na good portrait of him--two, no, three. Two where he is alone and one\nwhere he is in a group of other men. He is particular that I should\ntell you of this. In one you see his walking-stick.\u201d\n\nNow at that time the members of Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s family did not know\nof the existence of this group. They attached no great importance,\nhowever, to the revelations but in subsequent sittings, notably on the\n3rd of December, before the photographs had arrived, before they were\nseen, more detailed information was received. According to the spirit\u2019s\nstatements, the photograph was of a dozen officers or more, taken\nout of doors, in front of a sort of shelter (the medium kept drawing\nvertical lines in the air). Some were sitting down and some were\nstanding up at the back. Raymond was sitting; somebody was leaning on\nhim. There were several photographs taken.\n\nOn the 7th of December, the photographs arrived at Mariemont, Sir\nOliver\u2019s house near Edgbaston. There were three copies, all differing\nslightly, of the same group of twenty-one officers, those in the back\nrow standing up, the others seated. The group was taken outside a sort\nof temporary wooden structure, such as might be a hospital shed, with\nsix conspicuous nearly vertical lines on the roof. Raymond was one of\nthose sitting on the ground in front; his walking-stick, mentioned\nin the first revelation, was lying across his feet. And a striking\npiece of evidence is that his is the only instance where one man is\nleaning or resting his hand on the shoulder of another, in two of the\nphotographs, or, in the third, his leg.\n\nThis manifestation is one of the most remarkable that have hitherto\nbeen obtained, because it eliminates almost entirely any telepathic\ninterference, that is to say, any subconscious intercommunication\nbetween the persons present at the sitting, all of whom were absolutely\nunaware of the existence of the photographs. If we refuse to admit\nthe intervention of the deceased--which should, I agree, be admitted\nonly in the last resort--we must, in order to explain the revelation,\nsuppose that the subconsciousness of the medium or of one of those\npresent entered into communication, through the vast mazes and deserts\nof space and amid millions of strange souls, with the subconsciousness\nof one of the officers or of one of the people who had seen these\nphotographs whose existence there was no reason for suspecting. This is\npossible; but it is so fortuitous, so prodigious that the survival and\nintervention of the deceased would, in the circumstances, seem almost\nless supernatural and more probable.\n\n\n4\n\nI will not enter into the details of the numerous sittings which\npreceded or followed this one; nor will I even undertake to summarize\nthem. To share the emotion aroused, we must read the reports which\nfaithfully reproduce these strange dialogues between the living and\nthe dead. We receive the impression that the departed son comes daily\ncloser and closer to life and converses more and more easily, more and\nmore familiarly with all those who loved him before he was overtaken\nby the shadows of the grave. He recalls to each of them a thousand\nlittle forgotten incidents. He remains among his own kindred as though\nhe had never left them. He is always present and prepared to answer.\nHe mingles so completely in their whole life that no one any longer\nthinks of mourning his loss. They question him about his present\nstate, ask him where he is, what he is, what he is doing. He needs no\npressing; he at once declares himself astonished at the incredible\nreality of that new world. He is very happy there, reforming himself,\ncondensing himself, so to speak, and gradually finding himself again.\nThe existence of the intelligence and of the will, disencumbered of\nthe body, is freer, lighter, of greater range and diffusion, but\ncontinues very like what it was in the flesh. The environment is no\nlonger physical but spiritual; and there is a translation to another\nplane rather than the break, the complete overthrow, the extraordinary\ntransitions which we are pleased to imagine. After all, is it not\nfairly plausible? And are we not wrong in believing that death changes\neverything, from one day to the next, and that there is a sudden and\ninconceivable abyss between the hour which precedes decease and that\nwhich follows it? Is it in conformity with the habits of nature? Is\nthe life-force which we carry within ourselves and which doubtless\ncannot be extinguished, is that force to so great a degree crippled and\ncramped by our body that, when it leaves this body, it becomes, then\nand there, entirely different and unrecognizable?\n\nBut I must set a limit to speculation and, lest I exceed the limits of\nthis essay, I must pass by two or three revelations less striking than\nthat of the photograph, but pretty strange notwithstanding. Obviously,\nit is not the first time that such manifestations have occurred; but\nthese are really of a higher quality than those which crowd several\nvolumes of the _Proceedings_. Do they furnish the proof for which we\nask? I do not think so; but will any one ever be able to supply us\nwith that compelling proof? What can the discarnate spirit do when\ntrying to establish that it continues to exist? If it speak to us of\nthe most secret, the most private incidents of a common past, we reply\nthat it is we who are reviving those memories within ourselves. If it\naim at convincing us by its description of the world beyond the grave,\nnot all the most glorious and unexpected pictures of that world which\nit might trace are worth anything as evidence, for they cannot be\ncontrolled. If we seek a proof by asking it to foretell the future, it\nconfesses that it does not know the future much better than we do,\nwhich is likely enough, seeing that any knowledge of this kind implies\na sort of omniscience and consequently omnipotence which can hardly be\nacquired in a moment. All that remains to it, therefore, is such little\nsnatches of evidence and uncertain attempts at proof as we find here.\nIt is not enough, I admit; for psychometry, that is to say, a similar\nmanifestation of clairvoyance between one living subconsciousness\nand another, gives almost equally astonishing results. But here as\nthere these results show at least that we have around us wandering\nintelligences, already enfranchised from the narrow and burdensome\nlaws of space and matter, that sometimes know things which we do not\nknow or no longer know. Do they emanate from ourselves, are they only\nmanifestations of faculties as yet unknown, or are they external,\nobjective and independent of ourselves? Are they merely alive in the\nsense in which we speak of our bodies, or do they belong to bodies\nwhich have ceased to exist? That is what we cannot yet decide; but it\nmust be acknowledged that, once we admit their existence, which at this\ndate is hardly contestable, it becomes much less difficult to agree\nthat they belong to the dead.\n\nThis at least may be said: if experiments such as these do not\ndemonstrate positively that the dead are able directly, manifestly\nand almost materially to mingle with our existence and to remain in\ntouch with us, they prove that they continue to live in us much more\nardently, profoundly, personally and passionately than had hitherto\nbeen believed; and that in itself is more than we dared hope.\n\n\n\n\nBAD NEWS\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nBAD NEWS\n\n\n1\n\nFor more than four years, evil tidings passed night and day over almost\nhalf the world of men. Never since our earth came into being were they\nknown to spread in crowds so dense and busy and commanding. In the\nhappy days of peace, we would come upon the gloomy visitants here and\nthere, travelling over hill and dale, nearly always alone, sometimes in\ncouples, rarely in companies of three, timid and shy, seeking to pass\nunnoticed and humbly undertaking the smallest messages of sorrow that\ndestiny confided to their charge. Now they go with heads erect; they\nare almost arrogant; and swollen with their importance, they neglect\nany misfortunes that are not deathly. They encumber the roads, cross\nthe seas and rivers, invade the streets, do not forget the by-ways and\nclimb the most rugged and stony tracks. There is not a hovel cowering\nin the dingiest and most obscure suburb of a great city, not a cottage\nhidden in the recesses of the poorest hamlet of the most inaccessible\nmountain, which escapes their search and towards which one of them,\ndetached from the sinister band, does not hasten with its little\nfootstep, eager, pitiless and sure. Each has its goal whence nothing\ncan divert it. Through time and space, over rocks and walls they press\nonward, swift and determined, blind and deaf to all that would retard\nthem, thinking only of fulfilling their duty, which is to announce as\nsoon as may be to the most sensitive and defenceless heart the greatest\nsorrow that can fall upon it.\n\n\n2\n\nWe watch them pass as emissaries of destiny. To us they seem as fatal\nas the very misfortune of which they are but the heralds; and no one\ndreams of barring the way before them. So soon as one of them arrives,\nall unexpected, in our midst, we leave everything, we rush forward, we\ngather round it. Almost a religious fear compasses it about; we whisper\nreverently; and we should bow no lower in the presence of a messenger\nof God. Not only would no one dare to contradict it, or advise it, or\nbeg it to be patient, to grant a few hours of respite, to hide in the\ndarkness or to arrive by a longer road; on the contrary, all compete in\noffering it zealous if humble service. The most compassionate, the most\npitiful are the most assiduous and obsequious, as though there were no\nduty more unmistakable, no act of charity more meritorious than to lead\nthe dark envoy by the shortest and the quickest way to the heart which\nit is to strike.\n\n\n3\n\nOnce again, we are here confounding that which belongs to destiny with\nthat which belongs to ourselves. The misfortune was perhaps not to be\navoided; but a great part of the sorrows that attend it remain in our\npower. It is for us to be careful of them, to direct them, to subdue\nthem, disarm them, delay them, turn them aside and sometimes even to\nstop them altogether.\n\nIn effect, we hardly yet know the psychology of sorrow, which is as\ndeep, as complex and as worthy of study as the passions to which\nwe devote so much of our time. In everyday life, it is true, great\nsorrows, though not so rare as we could have wished, were nevertheless\ntoo widely scattered for us to study them easily, step by step. To-day,\nalas, they are the ground of all our thoughts; and we are learning\nat last that, even as love or happiness or vanity, they have their\nsecrets, their habits, their illusions, their sophistries, their dark\ncorners, their baffling mazes and their unforeseen abysses; for man,\nwhether he love or rejoice or weep, remains ever constant to himself!\n\nIt is not true, as we too willingly agree, that, since unhappiness\nmust be known sooner or later, our only duty is to reveal it at the\nearliest moment, for the sorrow that is yet green is very different\nfrom the sorrow that is already fading. It is not true, as we admit\nwithout question, that anything is better than ignorance or uncertainty\nand that there is a sort of cowardice in not forthwith announcing the\nbad news which we know to those whom it must prostrate in the dust. On\nthe contrary, cowardice lies in ridding ourselves of the bad news as\nquickly as we may and in not bearing its whole burden, secretly and\nalone, as long as we are able. When the bad news arrives, our first\nduty is to set it apart, to prevent it from spreading, to master it as\nwe would a malefactor or a stalking pestilence, to close all means of\nescape, to mount guard over it, so that it cannot break forth and do\nharm. Our duty is not merely, as the best of us and the most prudent\nseem to believe, to usher in the bad news with a thousand precautions,\nwith short and muffled, sidelong and measured steps, by the back-door,\ninto the dwelling which it is to devastate; rather is it our duty\ndefinitely to forbid its entrance and to have the courage to chain it\nin our own dwelling, which it will fill with unjust and insupportable\nreproaches and upbraidings. Instead of making ourselves the easy echo\nof its cries, we should think only of stifling its voice. Each hour\nthat we thus pass in restless and painful intimacy with the hateful\nprisoner is an hour of suffering which we accept for ourselves and\nwhich we spare the victim of fate. It is almost certain that the\nmalignant recluse will end by escaping our vigilance; but here the very\nminutes have their value and there is no gain, however small, that we\nare entitled to neglect. The hour-glass that measures the phases of\nsorrow is much finer and truer than that which marks the stages of\npleasure. The time that passes between the death of one whom we love\nand the moment when we hear of his death is as full of pain as it is\nof days. Most to be feared of all is the first blow of misfortune;\nit is then that the heart is smitten and torn with a wound that will\nnever heal. But this blow has not its shattering and sometimes mortal\nforce unless it strike its victim at once and, so to speak, fresh from\nthe event. Every hour that is interposed deadens the sting and lessens\nits virulence. A death already some weeks old no longer wears the\nsame face as that which is made known on the very day when it occurs;\nand, if a few months have covered it, it is no longer a death, it has\nbecome a memory. The days that divide us from it have almost the same\nvalue whether they pass before we hear of it or afterwards. They remove\nbeforehand from the eyes and heart the blinding horror of the loss;\nthey step forward and draw it out of the clutch of madness into a past\nlike that which softens regret. They weave a sort of retrospective\nmemory which stretches into the past and grants straightway all that\ntrue memory would have given little by little, hour by hour, during\nthe long months that part the first despair from the sorrow which grows\nwise and reconciled and ready to hope anew.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SOUL OF NATIONS\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE SOUL OF NATIONS\n\n\n1\n\nIn the admirable and touching pages in which Octave Mirbeau bequeaths\nhis last thoughts to us, the great friend whose loss is mourned by\nall who in this world hunger and thirst after justice expresses\nhis surprise at finding how in the supreme moments of its life the\ncollective soul of the French nation differs from the soul of each of\nthe individuals of which it is composed.\n\nHe had devoted the best part of his work to examining, dissecting,\npresenting in a blinding and sometimes unbearable light and\nstigmatizing with unequalled eloquence and bitterness the weaknesses\nand selfishness, the folly and meannesses, the vanity and sordid\nmoney-sense, the lack of conscience, honesty, charity, dignity, the\nshameful stains on the life of his fellow-countrymen. And behold,\nin the hour of insistent duty, there arises suddenly, as in a fairy\nscene, out of the quagmire which he had so long stirred with rough and\ngenerous disgust, the purest, noblest, most patient, fraternal and\nwhole-hearted spirit of heroism and sacrifice that the world has ever\nknown, not only in the most glorious days of its history, but even in\nthe time of its most romantic legends, which were but glorious dreams\nwhich it never hoped to realize.\n\nI could say as much of another nation, which I know well, since it\nlives in the land where I was born. The Belgians, in the guise in which\nwe saw them daily, appeared to give us no promise of a noble soul.\nThey seemed to us narrow and limited, a little commonplace, honest\nin a mean, inglorious way, without ideals or generous aspirations,\nwholly absorbed by their petty material welfare, their petty local\nwrangles. Yet, when the same hour of duty sounded for them, more\nmenacing and formidable than those of the other nations, because it\npreceded all of them in a terrible mystery; while there was everything\nto gain and nothing to lose, save honour, if they proved faithless to\na plighted word; at the first call of their conscience aroused as by a\nthunderbolt, without hesitating or glancing at what they had to meet or\nundergo, with an unanimous and irresistible impulse, they astonished\nmankind by a decision such as no other people had ever taken and saved\nthe world, well knowing that themselves could not be saved. And this\nassuredly is the noblest sacrifice that the heroes and martyrs who have\nhitherto appeared to be the professed exponents of sublime courage are\nable to achieve upon this earth of ours.\n\nOn the other hand, to those of us who had had occasion to mix with\nGermans, who had lived in Germany and believed that they knew German\nmanners and letters, it seemed beyond doubt that the Bavarians,\nSaxons, Hanoverians and Rhinelanders, notwithstanding some defects of\neducation rather than character which grated upon us a little, also\npossessed certain qualities, notably a genial kindness, a gravity, a\nlaboriousness, a steadiness, an uncomplaining temper, a simplicity\nin their domestic life, a sense of duty and a habit of taking life\nconscientiously, which we had never known or had succeeded in losing.\nSo, despite the warnings of history, we were struck dumb with amazement\nand at first refused to believe the early tales of atrocities which\nwere not incidental, as in every war, but deliberate, premeditated,\nsystematic and perpetrated with a light heart by an entire people\nsetting itself of sober purpose and with a sort of perverse pride\noutside the pale of humanity, transforming itself of a sudden into a\npack of devils more formidable and destructive than all those which\nHell had hitherto belched forth into our world.\n\n\n2\n\nWe knew already and Dr. Gustave Le Bon had demonstrated to us in a\ncurious way that the soul of a crowd does not resemble the soul\nof any of its component members. According to the leaders and the\ncircumstances that control it, the collective soul is sometimes\nloftier, juster, more generous and most often more impulsive, more\ncredulous, more cruel, more barbarous and blind. But a crowd has only\na provisional, momentary soul, which does not survive the short-lived\nand nearly always violent event that calls it into being; and its\ncontingent and transitory psychology is hardly able to tell us how the\nprofound, lasting and, so to speak, immortal soul of a nation takes\nshape.\n\n\n3\n\nIt is quite natural that a nation should not know itself at all and\nthat its acts should plunge it into a state of bewilderment from which\nit does not recover until history has explained them to a greater or\nlesser degree. None of the men who make up a nation knows himself;\nstill less does any of them know his fellows. Not one of us really\nknows who or what he is; not one of us can say what he will do in\nunexpected circumstances which are a trifle more serious than those\nwhich form the customary tissue of life. We spend our existence in\nquestioning and exploring ourselves; our acts are as much a revelation\nto ourselves as to others; and, the nearer we draw to our end, the\nfarther stretches the vista of that which still remains for us to\ndiscover. We own but the smallest part of ourselves; the rest, which is\nalmost the whole, does not belong to us at all, but merges in the past\nand the future and in other mysteries more unknown than the future or\nthe past.\n\nWhat is true of each one of us is very much more true of a great nation\ncomposed of millions of men. That represents a future and a past\nstretching incomparably farther than those of a single human life. We\nadmit and constantly repeat that a nation is guided by its dead. It is\ncertain that the dead continue to live in it a far more active life\nthan is generally believed and that they control it unknown to itself,\neven as, at the other end of the ages, the men of the future, that\nis to say, all those who are not yet born, all those whom it carries\nwithin itself as it does its dead, play no less important a part in a\nnation\u2019s decisions. But in its very present, at the moment when it is\nliving and putting forth its activity on this earth, in addition to\nthe power of those who no longer are and those who are not yet, there\nis outside the nation, outside the aggregate of bodies and brains that\nmake it up, a host of forces and faculties which have not found or have\nnot wished to take their place, or which do not abide in the nation\nconsistently, and which nevertheless belong to it as essentially and\ndirect it as effectively as those which are comprised within it. What\nour body contains when we believe ourselves circumscribed is little in\ncomparison with what it does not contain; and it is in what the body\ndoes not contain that the highest and most powerful part of our being\nseems to dwell. We must not forget that it grows stronger each day\nthat we neither die nor come into being, in a word, that we are not\nwholly incarnate, and that, on the other hand, our flesh comprises\nmuch more than ourselves. It is this that constitutes all the floating\nforces which make up the real soul of a people, forces very much deeper\nand more numerous than those which seem fixed in the body and the\nspirit. They do not show themselves in the petty incidents of daily\nlife, which concern only the mean and narrow covering in which a nation\ngoes sheltered; but they unite, join forces and reveal their passionate\nardour at the grave and tragic hours when everlasting destiny is at\nstake. They then lay down decisions which history inscribes on her\nrecords, decisions whose grandeur, generosity and heroism astonish even\nthose who have taken them more or less unknown to themselves and often\nin spite of themselves, decisions which are manifested in their own\neyes as an unexpected, magnificent and incomprehensible revelation of\nthemselves.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MOTHERS\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE MOTHERS\n\n\n1\n\nIt was they who bore the main burden of suffering in this war.\n\nIn our streets and open spaces and all along the roads, in our\nchurches, in our towns and villages, in every house, we come into\ncontact with mothers who have lost their son or are living in an\nanguish more cruel than the certainty of death.\n\nLet us try to understand their loss. They know what it means, but they\ndo not tell the men.\n\nTheir son is taken from them at the fairest moment of his life, when\ntheir own is in its decline. When a child dies in infancy, it is as\nthough his soul had hardly gone, as though it were lingering near the\nmother who brought it into the world, awaiting the time when it may\nreturn in a new form. The death which visits the cradle is not the\nsame as that which spreads terror over the earth; but a son who dies\nat the age of twenty does not come back again and leaves not a gleam\nof hope behind him. He carries away with him all the future that his\nmother had remaining to her, all that she gave to him and all his\npromise: the pangs, anguish and smiles of birth and childhood, the joys\nof youth, the reward and the harvest of maturity, the comfort and the\npeace of old age.\n\nHe carries away with him something much more than himself: it is not\nhis life only that comes to an end, it is numberless days that finish\nsuddenly, a whole generation that becomes extinct, a long series of\nfaces, of little fondling hands, of play and laughter, all of which\nfall at one blow on the battle-field, bidding farewell to the sunshine\nand reentering the earth which they will not have known. All this the\neyes of our mothers perceive without understanding; and this is why, at\ncertain times, the weight and sadness of their glance are more than any\nof us can bear.\n\n\n2\n\nAnd yet they do not weep as the mothers wept in former wars. All their\nsons disappear one by one; and we do not hear them complain or moan\nas in days gone by, when great sufferings, great massacres and great\ncatastrophes were surrounded by the clamours and lamentations of the\nmothers.\n\nThey do not gather in the public places, they do not utter\nrecriminations, they rail at no one, they do not rebel. They swallow\ntheir sobs and stifle their tears, as though obeying a command which\nthey have passed from one to the other, unknown to the men.\n\nWe do not know what it is that sustains them and gives them the\nstrength to endure the remnant of their lives. Some of them have other\nchildren; and we can understand that they transfer to these the love\nand the future which death has shattered. Many of them have never lost\nor are striving to recover their faith in the eternal promises; and\nhere again we can understand that they do not despair, for the mothers\nof the martyrs did not despair either. But thousands of others, whose\nhome is for ever deserted and whose sky is peopled by none but pale\nphantoms, retain the same hope as those who keep on hoping. What gives\nthem this courage which astonishes whenever we behold it?\n\nWhen the best, the most compassionate, the wisest among us meet one of\nthese mothers who has just stealthily wiped her eyes, so that the sight\nof her unhappiness may not offend others who are happier, when we seek\nfor words which, uttered amid the glaring directness of the most awful\nsorrow that can strike a human heart, shall not sound like odious or\nridiculous lies, we can hardly find anything to say to her. We speak\nto her of the justice and the beauty of the cause for which her hero\nfell, of the immense and necessary sacrifice, of the remembrance and\ngratitude of mankind, of the irreality of life, which is measured not\nby the length of days but by the lofty height of duty and glory. We\nadd perhaps that the dead do not die, that there are no dead, that\nthose who are no more live nearer to our souls than when they were in\nthe flesh and that all that we loved in them lingers in our hearts so\nlong as it is visited by our memory and revived by our love.\n\nBut, even while we speak, we feel the emptiness of what we say. We\nare conscious that all this is true only for those whom death has\nnot hurled into the abyss where words are nothing more than childish\nbabble; that the most ardent memory cannot take the place of a dear\nreality which we touch with our hands or lips; and that the most\nexalted thought is as nothing compared with the daily going out and\ncoming in, the familiar presence at meals, the morning and evening\nkiss, the fond embrace at the departure and the intoxicating delight\nat the return. The mothers know and feel this better than we do; and\nthat is why they do not answer our attempts at consolation and why\nthey listen to them in silence, finding within themselves other\nreasons for living and hoping than those which we, vainly searching the\nwhole horizon of human certainty and thought, try to bring them from\nthe outside. They resume the burden of their days without telling us\nwhence they derive their strength or teaching us the secret of their\nself-sacrifice, their resignation and their heroism.\n\n\n\n\nTHREE UNKNOWN HEROES\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHREE UNKNOWN HEROES\n\n\n1\n\nThe Belgian government published last year a _Reply to the German White\nBook of 10 May 1915_.\n\nThis reply gives peremptory and categorical denials to all the\nallegations in the White Book on the subject of _francs-tireurs_, of\nattacks by civilians and of the Belgian women\u2019s cruelty to the German\nprisoners and wounded. It contains a body of authentic and overwhelming\nevidence upon the massacres at Andenne, Dinant, Louvain and Aerschot\nwhich enables history here and now to pronounce its verdict with even\ngreater certainty than the most scrupulous jury of a criminal court.\n\nAmong the most frightful incidents reported in these accounts by\neye-witnesses, I would linger to-day upon only two of those which\nmarked the sack of Aerschot; not that they are more odious or cruel\nthan the others--on the contrary, beside the unprovoked murders and\nwholesale executions at Andenne, Dinant and Louvain, which are of\nunsurpassable horror, they seem almost kindly--but I select them for\nthe very reason that they display more clearly than in its most violent\nexcesses what we may call the normal mentality of the German army and\nthe abominable things which it did when it believed itself to be acting\nwith justice, moderation and humanity. I select them above all because\nthey show us the admirable and touching state of mind, as displayed\namidst a terrible ordeal, of a little Belgian city, the most innocent\nof all the victims of this war, and offer for our contemplation\ninstances of simple and heroic self-sacrifice which have escaped notice\nand which it is well to bring to light, for they are as beautiful as\nthe most splendid examples in the fairest pages of Plutarch.\n\n\n2\n\nAerschot is a humble and happy little town in Flemish Brabant, one of\nthose modest unknown clusters of habitations which, like Dinant, for\never to be regretted and buried in the past, nobody used to visit,\nbecause they contained no buildings of note, but which retained and\nrepresented all the more, in the depths of their silence and their\nplacid isolation, Flemish life in its most special, intimate, intense,\ntraditional, suave and peaceable aspect. In these half-rustic little\ncities we find hardly any industries, at most a malt-kiln or two,\na corn-mill, an oil-works, a chicory-factory. Their life is almost\nagricultural; and the well-to-do inhabitants live on the produce or\nthe rents of their fields, their meadows and their woods. The houses\nin the church-square are substantial-looking, more or less cubical in\nshape and painted virgin white; their carriage-gates are adorned with\nglittering brasses. All through the week the square is almost deserted\nand wakens into life only on market-days and on Sunday mornings, at\nthe hour of high mass. In a word, it is a picture of tranquillity,\nof placid waiting for meals and repose, of drowsy, easy existence\nand perhaps of happiness, if happiness consists in being happy in\na half-slumber free of remote ambitions, exaggerated passions or\nover-eager dreams.\n\nIt was here, in this peaceful sojourn of immemorial restfulness, which\nnot even the war had hitherto disturbed below the surface, that, on\nthe 19th of August, 1914, at nine o\u2019clock in the morning, after the\nretreat of the last Belgian soldiers, the square was suddenly invaded\nby a dense and endless stream of German troops. The burgomaster\u2019s\nson, a lad of fifteen, hurried to close the Venetian shutters of his\nfather\u2019s house and was wounded in the leg by one of the bullets which\nthe victors fired at random through the windows.\n\nAt ten o\u2019clock, the German officer in command sent for the burgomaster,\nM. Tielemans, to appear at the Town-hall. He was received with\ninsults, hustled and abused for a _Schweinhund_, or pig-dog, a species\nof animal which appears to be indigenous to Germany.\n\nNext, Colonel Stenger, commanding the 8th infantry brigade, and his\ntwo aides-de-camp took up their quarters in the burgomaster\u2019s house in\nthe church-square and, I may add in passing, forthwith broke open all\nthe drawers in their rooms, after which they went to the balcony and\nwatched the march-past of their troops.\n\nAt four o\u2019clock in the afternoon, obsessed by the delusion of\n_francs-tireurs_, some soldiers, seized with panic, began to fire\nshots in the streets. The colonel, standing on the balcony, was hit by\na German bullet and fell. One of the aides-de-camp rushed downstairs\nshouting:\n\n\u201cThe colonel is dead! I want the burgomaster!\u201d\n\nM. Tielemans felt that his time was come:\n\n\u201cThis is a serious matter for me,\u201d he said to his wife.\n\nShe squeezed his hand and urged him to keep courage. The burgomaster\nwas arrested and ill-treated by the soldiers. In vain his wife remarked\nto the captain that her husband and son could not have fired, since\nthey possessed no weapons.\n\n\u201cThat makes no difference,\u201d replied the bully in uniform; \u201che\u2019s\nresponsible. Also,\u201d he added, \u201cI want your son.\u201d\n\nThis son was the boy of fifteen who had been wounded in the leg. As\nhe had a difficulty in walking, because of his wound, he was brutally\njostled before his mother\u2019s eyes and escorted with kicks to the\nTown-hall, there to join his father.\n\nMeanwhile this same captain, persisting in his contention that his\nmen had been fired upon, compelled Madame Tielemans to go through\nthe house with him, from cellar to attic. He was obliged to observe\nthat all the rooms were empty and all the windows closed. Throughout\nthis inspection, he threatened the poor woman with his revolver. Her\ndaughter placed herself between her mother and their sinister visitor,\nwho did not understand. When they returned to the hall downstairs, the\nmother asked him:\n\n\u201cWhat is to become of us?\u201d\n\nColdly, he replied:\n\n\u201cYou will be shot; so will your daughter and your servants.\u201d\n\nThe pillage and the methodical setting on fire of the town now began.\nAll the houses on the right-hand side of the square were in flames.\nFrom time to time, the soldiers apostrophized the women, shouting:\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re going to be shot, you\u2019re going to be shot!\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\u201cAt that moment,\u201d says Madame Tielemans, in her sworn deposition,\n\u201cthe soldiers were leaving our house, their arms filled with bottles\nof wine. They opened the windows and removed all the contents of our\nrooms. I turned away so as not to behold the pillage. By the lurid\nlight of the burning houses, my eyes fell upon my husband, my son and\nmy brother-in-law, accompanied by some other gentlemen who were being\nled to execution. Never shall I forget the sight nor the look on the\nface of my husband seeking his house for the last time and asking\nhimself what had befallen his wife and daughter, while I, lest I should\nsap his courage, could not call out, \u2018I am here!\u2019\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe hours passed. The women were driven out of the town and led like a\nherd of cattle, along a road strewn with corpses, to a distant meadow,\nwhere they were penned until morning. The men were arrested and their\nhands tied behind their backs with copper wire so cruelly tightened as\nto draw blood. They were gathered into groups and made to lie down so\nthat their heads touched the ground and they were unable to make any\nmovement. The night was spent in this way, with the town burning and\nthe pillage and orgy continuing.\n\nBetween five and six in the morning, the military authorities decided\nthat the executions should begin and that one of the largest groups\nof prisoners, composed of about a hundred civilians, should be present\nat the death of the burgomaster, his son and his brother. An officer\ninformed the burgomaster that his hour had come. On hearing these\nwords, a citizen of Aerschot, Claes van Nuffel by name, went up to the\nofficer, begged him to spare the chief magistrate\u2019s life and offered\nto die in his stead. He added that he was the burgomaster\u2019s political\nadversary, but that he considered that, at this moment, M. Tielemans\nwas essential to the town.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied the officer, harshly, \u201cwe must have the burgomaster.\u201d\n\nM. Tielemans stood up, thanked M. van Nuffel and said that he would\ndie with an easy mind, as he had spent his existence doing all the\ngood in his power, and that he would not beg for mercy. He entreated,\nhowever, that the lives of his fellow-citizens and of his son, a boy of\nfifteen and his mother\u2019s last consolation, might be spared. The officer\ngrinned and made no reply. The burgomaster\u2019s brother next asked for\nmercy, not for himself but for his brother and his nephew. His request\nfell on deaf ears. The lad then got up and took his place between his\nfather and his uncle. Six soldiers took aim at ten yards\u2019 distance; the\nofficer lowered his sword; and, as the widow of the heroic burgomaster\nsays, \u201cthe best man in this world had ceased to exist.\u201d\n\n\n3\n\nI will now quote from the evidence of M. Gustave Nys, an eye-witness of\nthe horrible drama which nearly numbered him among its victims:\n\n  \u201cThe other civilians were thereupon placed in rows of three. The\n  third in each row was to leave it and fall out behind the dead\n  bodies, in order to be shot. All the civilians had their hands tied\n  behind their backs. My brother and I stood next to each other: I was\n  number two; my brother Omer, twenty years of age, was number three.\n  I asked the officer, \u2018May I change places with my brother? It makes\n  no difference to you who falls under your bullets; but it does to my\n  mother, who is a widow, for my brother has finished his studies and\n  is more useful to her than I am.\u2019 Once again he refused to listen\n  to my prayer. \u2018Fall out, number three!\u2019 My brother and I embraced;\n  and he joined the others. There were thirty of them, drawn up in\n  line. Then a horrible scene took place: the German soldiers, walking\n  slowly along the row, killed three at each discharge of their rifles,\n  waiting between the volleys for the officer\u2019s word of command.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\nIncidents such as these would pass unperceived if one did not take the\ntrouble to seek them out and to collect them piously amid the huge\nmass of tragedies which for more than four years upset and ravaged\nthe unhappy country tortured by its invaders. Had they occurred in\nthe history of Greece or Rome, they would have found a place among\nthe great deeds that honour our earth and deserve to live for ever\nin the memory of man. It is our duty to make them known for a moment\nand to engrave in our recollection the names of those who were their\nheroes. Thus set down, simply and plainly, as befits historic truth,\nin depositions sworn under oath before a nameless registrar who has\nstripped them of any literary or sentimental embellishment, they give\nat first but a very faint idea of the intensity of the tragedy and\nthe value of the sacrifice. There is here no question of a glorious\ndeath faced amid the excitement of the fighting, on a vast field of\nbattle. Nor are we considering an indefinite or overhanging menace, or\nan uncertain, remote and perhaps avoidable danger. We have to do with\nan obscure, solitary, horrible and imminent death in a ditch; and the\nsix rifle-barrels are there, aimed almost point-blank, ready, upon a\nsign of the officer who accepts your offer, to change you, in a second,\ninto a heap of bleeding flesh and to send you to the unknown, terrible\nregion which man dreads all the more when he is still full of strength\nand life. There is not a moment\u2019s interval nor a gleam of hope between\nquestion and answer, between existence with all its joys and death\nwith all its horrors. There is no encouragement, no word or gesture\nof stimulation or support, no reward; in an instant, all is given in\nexchange for nothing; it is sheer self-sacrifice standing naked and so\npure that we are surprised that not even Germans were conquered by its\nbeauty.\n\nThere was but one manner in which they could have extricated themselves\nwithout dishonour and that was to pardon the two victims; or else,\nsupposing the thing which was not, which never is the case, that a\ndeath was absolutely necessary, there was a second solution, which was\nto accept the offer and to kill the martyr whom they ought to have\nworshipped on their knees. In this way they would only have acted as\nthe worst of savages. But they discovered a third, which doubtless,\nbefore them, the Carthaginians alone would have invented and adopted.\nFor that matter, they exceeded the fiercest savagery and equalled the\nabominable Punic morality in another case which brings to mind that of\nRegulus and which will be the third instance of heroism that I intend\nto recall.\n\n\n5\n\nA few days after the events which I have narrated, on the 23rd of\nAugust, 1914, Dinant became the scene of wholesale massacres which\ninvolved exactly six hundred and six victims, including eleven children\nunder five years old, twenty-eight of ages between ten and fifteen and\nseventy-one women.\n\nNothing can give an idea of the horror and infamy of these massacres,\nwhich form one of the most disgraceful and terrible pages in the long\nand monstrous history of Teuton shame. But it is not my purpose to\nspeak of this for the moment. There would be too much to tell. I wish\nto-day only to separate from the mass an episode in which the hero\nof Dinant-la-Wallone is worthy of a place beside his two brethren of\nAerschot in Flanders.\n\nJust outside Dinant, near the famous Roche \u00e0 Bayard, the legendary\nglory of the fair and smiling little township, the Germans occupied the\nright bank of the Meuse and were beginning to build a bridge of boats.\nThe French, hidden in the bushes and the windings of the left bank,\nwere firing on the engineers. Their fire was not very well-sustained;\nand the Germans, without the least justification, drew the conclusion\nthat it was due to _francs-tireurs_, who, for that matter, throughout\nthis Belgian campaign, never existed except in their imagination. At\nthat moment, eighty hostages, taken from among the inhabitants of\nDinant, were collected and kept in sight at the foot of the rock. The\nGerman officer sent one of them, M. Bourdon, a clerk attached to the\nlaw-courts, to the left bank, to inform the enemy that, if the firing\ncontinued, all the hostages would be instantly shot. M. Bourdon\ncrossed the Meuse, fulfilled his mission and pluckily returned to\nreconstitute himself a prisoner. He assured the officer that he had\nconvinced himself that there were no _francs-tireurs_ and that only\nFrench soldiers of the regular army were taking part in the defence of\nthe other bank. A few more bullets fell; and the officer caused the\neighty hostages to be shot, beginning, that he might be punished as he\ndeserved for his heroic faithfulness to his pledged word, with the poor\nclerk, his wife, his daughter and his two sons, one of whom was a mere\nchild of fifteen.\n\n\n\n\nWASTED BEAUTIES\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nWASTED BEAUTIES\n\n\n1\n\nUnder the grey skies and the disheartening rains of this autumnal July,\nI think of the light which I have left behind me. I have left it down\nthere, on the now empty shores of the Mediterranean, and I ask myself\nin vain why I parted from it. Yet I was one of the last to tear myself\naway. All the others leave in the early days of April, recalled by\nlegendary memories of the deceitful spring-tides of the north, nor do\nthey realize that they are losing a great happiness.\n\nIt is good, it is wise to escape, amid the blue of sea and sky, the\nicy months of our winters, dismal as punishment; but, although in the\nsouth these months are warmer and above all more luminous than ours,\nthey do not quite make up to us for the darkness and the frost of our\nnative climes. The brightest and warmest hours, in spite of all,\nretain an after-taste of cloud and snow; they are beautiful, but timid;\nswiftly and fearfully they hasten towards the night. Now man, who is\nborn of the sun, like all things, has need of his hereditary portion of\nprimitive heat and all-pervading light. He has within him numberless\ndeep-seated cells which retain the memory of the resplendent days of\nthe prime and become unhappy when they cannot reap their harvest of\nrays. Man can live in the gloom, but at long last he loses the smile\nand the confidence that are so essential. Because of our twilit summers\nit becomes indispensable to restore the balance between darkness and\nlight and sometimes to drive away, by superb excesses of sunshine, the\ncold and the dark that invade our very souls.\n\n\n2\n\nIt reigns at a few hours\u2019 distance from us, the incomparable steady sun\nwhich we no longer see. Those who leave before mid-June do not know\nwhat happens when they are gone. Lo and behold, the real actors in this\nwonderful fairyland spring up on every side as though they had been\nawaiting the departure of intruding and mocking witnesses. During the\nwinter, in the presence of the official visitors, they have played but\na tempered prologue, a little colourless, a little slow, a little timid\nand restrained. But now of a sudden the great lyrical acts blaze forth\nupon the intoxicated earth.\n\nThe heavens open their vistas to the uttermost limits of the blue, to\nthe supreme heights where the glory and rapture of God are outspread;\nand all the flowers rend the gardens, the rocks and the heaths, to\nuplift themselves and leap towards the gulf of gladness which draws\nthem into space. The camomiles have gone mad; for six weeks they\nhold outstretched, to invisible lovers, their great round clusters\nlike shields of glowing snow. The scarlet, tumultuous mantle of the\nBougainvilleas blinds the houses whose dazzled windows blink amid\nthe flames. The yellow roses cover the hills with a saffron-coloured\ncloak; the pink roses, of the lovely, innocent pink of maiden blushes,\nflood the valleys, as though the divine well-springs of the dawn, which\nelaborate the ideal flesh of women and angels, had overflowed the\nearth. Others climb the trees, scale pillars, columns, house-fronts,\nporches, leap up and fall, rise again and multiply, jostle one\nanother, lie one on top of the other, forming so many bunches of\neffervescing delight, so many silent swarms of impassioned petals.\nAnd the innumerable, diverse and imperious scents that flow through\nthis ocean of mirth, like rivers which do not mingle, rivers whose\nsource we recognize at every breath! Here is the cold, green torrent\nof the rose-geranium, the trickle of clove-carnations, the bright,\nlimpid stream of lavender, the resinous eddy of the pine-barren and\nthe wide, still, luscious lake, of an all but dizzy sweetness, of the\norange-blossom, which drowns the country-side in the vast, unmeasured\nfragrance of the azure heavens, recognized at last.\n\n\n3\n\nI do not believe that the world contains anything more beautiful\nthan those gardens and valleys of the Proven\u00e7al coast during the six\nor seven weeks when departing spring still mingles its verdure with\nthe first warmth of advancing summer. But what gives this wonderful\nexultation of nature a melancholy which we do not find in any other\nspot is the inhuman and almost painful solitude in which it is\nrevealed. Here, amid this desert, this silence, this emptiness, from\nthe vine-arbours to the terraces and from the terraces to the porches\nof a thousand abandoned villas, reigns a rivalry of beauty which\nreaches a poignant agony of intensity, exhausting every energy, form\nand colour. There is here a sort of magic password, as though all the\npowers of grace and splendour that nature holds concealed had united\nto give at the same moment, to a spectator unknown to men, one great,\ndecisive proof of the blessings and the glories of the earth. There is\nhere a sort of unparalleled expectation, awful and unendurable, which\nover the hedges, the gates and the walls watches for the coming of a\nmighty god; an ecstatic silence which demands a supernatural presence;\na wild, exasperated impatience pouring from every side over the roads\nwhere nothing now passes save the mute and diaphanous procession of the\nhours.\n\n\n4\n\nAlas, how many beauties are wasted in this world! Here is enough to\nfeed our eyes till death! Here is the wherewithal to gather memories\nwhich would support our souls even to the tomb! Here is that which\nwould provide thousands of hearts with the supreme sustenance of life!\n\nIn the main, when we come to think of it, all that is best in us, all\nthat is pure, happy and limpid in our intelligence and our feelings,\nhas its origin in a few beautiful spectacles. If we had never seen\nbeautiful things, we should possess only poor and ugly images\nwherewith to clothe our ideas and emotions, which would perish of cold\nand wretchedness like those of the blind. The great highway which\nclimbs from the plains of existence to the radiant heights of human\nconsciousness would be so gloomy, so bare and so deserted that our\nthoughts would very soon lack the strength and courage to tread it; and\nwhere our thoughts no longer pass it is not long before the briars and\nthe cruel horrors of the forest return. A beautiful spectacle which we\nmight have seen, which was ours, which seemed to call us and from which\nwe fled can never be replaced. Nothing more can grow in the spot where\nit awaited us. It leaves in our soul a great barren area, in which we\nshall find naught but thorns on the day when we most need roses. Our\nthoughts and our actions derive their energy and their shape from the\nthings which our eyes have beheld. Between the heroic deed, the duty\naccomplished, the sacrifice generously accepted and the beautiful\nlandscape which we have seen in the past there is very often a closer\nand more vital connection than that which our memory has retained. The\nmore we see of beautiful things the better fitted we become to perform\ngood actions. If our inner life is to thrive, we need a magnificent\nstore of wonderful spoils.\n\n\n\n\nTHE INSECT WORLD\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE INSECT WORLD\n\n\n1\n\nHenri Fabre, as all the world now knows, is the author of half a\nscore of well-filled volumes in which, under the title of _Souvenirs\nentomologiques_,[1] he set down the results of fifty years of\nobservation, study and experiment on the insects that seem to us the\nbest-known and the most familiar: different species of wasps and wild\nbees, a few gnats, flies, beetles and caterpillars; in a word, all\nthose vague, unconscious, rudimentary and almost nameless little lives\nwhich surround us on every side and which we contemplate with eyes that\nare amused, but already thinking of other things, when we open our\nwindow to welcome the first hours of spring, or when we go into the\ngardens or the fields to bask in the blue summer days.\n\n\n2\n\nWe take up at random one of these great volumes and naturally expect to\nfind first of all the very learned and rather dry lists of names, the\nvery fastidious and exceedingly quaint specifications of those huge,\ndusty graveyards of which all the entomological treatises that we have\nread so far seem almost wholly to consist. We therefore open the book\nwithout zest and without unreasonable expectations; and forthwith,\nfrom between the open leaves, there rises and unfolds itself, without\nhesitation, without interruption and almost without remission to the\nend of the four thousand pages, the most extraordinary of tragic fairy\nplays that it is possible for the human imagination, not to create or\nto conceive, but to admit and to acclimatize within itself.\n\nIndeed, there is no question here of the human imagination. The insect\ndoes not belong to our world. The other animals, the plants even,\nnotwithstanding their dumb life and the great secrets which they\ncherish, do not seem wholly foreign to us. In spite of all, we feel\na certain earthly brotherhood in them. They often surprise and amaze\nour intelligence, but do not utterly upset it. There is something, on\nthe other hand, about the insect that does not seem to belong to the\nhabits, the ethics, the psychology of our globe. One would be inclined\nto say that the insect comes from another planet, more monstrous,\nmore energetic, more insane, more atrocious, more infernal than our\nown. One would think that it was born of some comet that had lost its\ncourse and died demented in space. In vain does it seize upon life with\nan authority, a fecundity unequalled here below: we cannot accustom\nourselves to the idea that it is a thought of that nature of whom we\nfondly believe ourselves to be the privileged children and probably\nthe ideal to which all the earth\u2019s efforts tend. Only the infinitely\nsmall disconcerts us still more greatly; but what really is the\ninfinitely small, other than an insect which our eyes do not see? There\nis, no doubt, in this astonishment and lack of understanding a certain\ninstinctive and profound uneasiness inspired by those existences\nincomparably better-armed, better-equipped than our own, by those\ncreature made up of a sort of compressed energy and activity in which\nwe suspect our most mysterious adversaries, our ultimate rivals and,\nperhaps, our successors.\n\n\n3\n\nBut it is time, under the conduct of an admirable guide, to penetrate\nbehind the scenes of our fairy play and to study at close quarters the\nactors and supernumeraries, loathsome or magnificent, as the case may\nbe, grotesque or sinister, heroic or appalling, gifted or stupid and\nalmost always improbable and unintelligible.\n\nAnd here, to begin with, taking the first that comes, is one of those\nindividuals, frequent in the South, where we can see it prowling\naround the abundant manna which the mule scatters heedlessly along\nthe white roads and the stony paths: I mean the Sacred Scarab of\nthe Egyptians, or, more simply, the Dung-beetle, the brother of our\nnorthern Geotrupes, a big Coleopteron all clad in black, whose mission\nin this world is to shape the more savoury parts of his find into an\nenormous ball which he must next roll to the underground dining-room\nwhere the incredible digestive adventure is to take its course. But\ndestiny, jealous of all undiluted bliss, before admitting him to that\nabode of sheer delight, imposes upon the grave and probably sententious\nbeetle tribulations without number, which are nearly always complicated\nby the arrival of an untoward parasite.\n\nHardly has he begun, by dint of great efforts of his forehead and his\nbandy legs, to roll the toothsome sphere backwards, when an indelicate\ncolleague, who has been awaiting the completion of the work, appears\nand hypocritically offers his services. The other well knows that, in\nthis case, help and services, besides being quite unnecessary, will\nsoon mean partition and dispossession; and he accepts the enforced\ncollaboration without enthusiasm. But, so that their respective\nrights may be clearly marked, the lawful owner invariably retains his\noriginal place, that is to say, he pushes the ball with his forehead,\nwhereas the compulsory guest pulls it towards him on the other side.\nAnd thus it jogs along between the two gossips, amid interminable\nvicissitudes, flurried falls, ludicrous tumbles, till it reaches the\nplace chosen to receive the treasure and to become the banqueting-hall.\nOn arriving, the owner sets about digging out the refectory, while\nthe sponger pretends to go innocently to sleep on the top of the\nbolus. The excavation becomes visibly wider and deeper; and soon the\nfirst Dung-beetle dives bodily into it. This is the moment for which\nthe cunning auxiliary was waiting. He nimbly scrambles down from the\nblissful eminence and, pushing it with all the energy that a bad\nconscience gives, strives to gain the offing. But the other, who is\nrather distrustful, interrupts his laborious digging, looks over the\nedge, sees the sacrilegious rape and leaps out of the hole. Caught in\nthe act, the shameless and dishonest partner makes untold efforts to\nplay upon the other\u2019s credulity, turns round and round the inestimable\norb and, embracing it and propping himself against it, with mock heroic\nexertions, pretends to be frantically supporting it on a non-existent\nslope. The two expostulate with each other in silence, gesticulate\nwildly with their mandibles and tarsi and then, with one accord, bring\nback the ball to the burrow.\n\nIt is pronounced sufficiently spacious and comfortable. They introduce\nthe treasure, they close the entrance to the corridor; and now in the\npropitious darkness and the warm damp, where the magnificent stercoral\nglobe alone holds sway, the two reconciled messmates sit down face\nto face. Then, far from the light and the cares of day and in the\ngreat silence of the subterranean shade, solemnly commences the most\nfabulous banquet whereof abdominal imagination ever evoked the absolute\nbeatitudes.\n\nFor two whole months, they remain cloistered; and, with their paunches\ngradually hollowing out the inexhaustible sphere, definite archetypes\nand sovereign symbols of the pleasures of the table and the delights of\nthe belly, they eat without stopping, without interrupting themselves\nfor a second, day or night. And, while they gorge, steadily, with a\nmovement perceptible and constant as that of a clock, at the rate of\nthree millimetres a minute, an endless, unbroken ribbon unwinds and\nstretches itself behind them, fixing the memory and recording the\nhours, days and weeks of the prodigious feast.\n\n\n4\n\nAfter the Dung-beetle, that dolt of the company, let us greet, also\nin the order of the Coleoptera, the model household of _Minotaurus\ntyphaeus_, who is pretty well-known and extremely gentle, in spite of\nhis dreadful name. The female digs a huge burrow which is often more\nthan a yard and a half deep and which consists of spiral staircases,\nlandings, passages and numerous chambers. The male loads the rubbish\non the three-pronged fork that surmounts his head and carries it to\nthe entrance of the conjugal dwelling. Next, he goes into the fields\nin quest of the harmless droppings left by the sheep, takes them down\nto the first story of the crypt and reduces them to flour with his\ntrident, while the mother, right at the bottom, collects the flour and\nkneads it into huge cylindrical loaves, which will presently be food\nfor the little ones. For three whole months, until the provisions are\ndeemed sufficient, the unfortunate husband, without taking nourishment\nof any kind, exhausts himself in this gigantic work. At last, his task\naccomplished, feeling his end at hand, so as not to encumber the house\nwith his wretched remains, he spends his last strength in leaving\nthe burrow, drags himself laboriously along and, lonely and resigned,\nknowing that he is henceforth good for nothing, goes and dies far away\namong the stones.\n\nHere, on another side, are some rather strange caterpillars, the\nProcessionaries, which are not rare; as it happens, a single string\nof them, five or six yards long, has just climbed down from my\numbrella-pines and is at this moment unfolding itself in the walks\nof my garden, carpeting the ground traversed with transparent\nsilk, according to the custom of the race. To say nothing of the\nmeteorological apparatus of unparalleled delicacy which they carry\non their backs, these caterpillars, as everybody knows, have this\nremarkable quality, that they travel only in a troop, one after the\nother, like Breughel\u2019s blind men or those of the parable, each of them\nobstinately, indissolubly following its leader; so much so that, our\nauthor having one morning disposed the file on the edge of a large\nstone vase, thus closing the circuit, for seven whole days, during\nan atrocious week, amid cold, hunger and unspeakable weariness, the\nunhappy troop on its tragic round, without rest, respite or mercy,\npursued the pitiless circle until death overtook it.\n\n\n5\n\nBut I see that our heroes are infinitely too numerous and that we\nmust not linger over our descriptions. We may at most, in enumerating\nthe more important and familiar, bestow on each of them a hurried\nepithet, in the manner of old Homer. Shall I mention, for instance, the\nLeucospis, a parasite of the Mason-bee, who, to slay his brothers and\nsisters in their cradle, arms himself with a horn helmet and a barbed\nbreastplate, which he doffs immediately after the extermination, the\nsafeguard of a hideous right of primogeniture? Shall I tell of the\nmarvellous anatomical knowledge of the Tachytes, of the Cerceris, of\nthe Ammophila, of the Languedocian Sphex and many other wasps, who,\naccording as they wish to paralyse or to kill their prey or their\nadversary, know exactly, without ever blundering, which nerve-centres\nto strike with their sting or their mandibles? Shall I speak of the art\nof the Eumenes, who transforms her stronghold into a complete museum\nadorned with shells and with grains of translucent quartz; of the\nmagnificent metamorphosis of the Grey Locust; of the musical instrument\nowned by the Cricket, whose bow numbers one hundred and fifty\ntriangular prisms that set in motion simultaneously the four dulcimers\nof the wing-case? Shall I sing the fairy-like birth of the nymph of the\nOnthophagus, a transparent monster, with a bull\u2019s snout, that seems\ncarved out of a block of crystal? Would you behold the Flesh-fly, the\ncommon Blue-bottle, daughter of the maggot, as she issues from the\nearth? Listen to our author:\n\n  \u201cShe disjoints her head into two movable halves, which, each\n  distended with its great red eye, by turns separate and reunite. In\n  the intervening space, a large, glassy hernia rises and disappears,\n  disappears and rises. When the two halves move asunder, with one\n  eye forced back to the right and the other to the left, it is as\n  though the insect were splitting its brain-pan in order to expel the\n  contents. Then the hernia rises, blunt at the end and swollen into\n  a great knob. Next, the forehead closes and the hernia retreats,\n  leaving visible only a kind of shapeless muzzle. In short, a frontal\n  pouch, with deep pulsations, momentarily renewed, becomes the\n  instrument of deliverance, the pestle wherewith the newly-hatched\n  Dipteron bruises the sand and causes it to crumble. Gradually, the\n  legs push the rubbish back and the insect advances so much towards\n  the surface.\u201d\n\n\n6\n\nAnd monster after monster passes, such as the imagination of Bosch or\nCallot never conceived! The larva of the Rosechafer, which, though it\nhas legs under its belly, always travels on its back; the Blue-winged\nLocust, unluckier still than the Flesh-fly and possessing nothing\nwherewith to perforate the soil, to escape from the tomb and reach\nthe light but a cervical bladder, a viscous blister; and the Empusa,\nwho, with her curved abdomen, her great projecting eyes, her legs with\nknee-pieces armed with cleavers, her halberd, her abnormally tall\nmitre, would certainly be the most devilish goblin that ever walked the\nearth, if, beside her, the Praying Mantis were not so frightful that\nher mere aspect deprives her victims of their power of movement when\nshe assumes, in front of them, what the entomologists have termed \u201cthe\nspectral attitude.\u201d\n\n\n7\n\nOne cannot mention, even casually, the numberless industries, nearly\nall of absorbing interest, exercised among the rocks, under the ground,\nin the walls, on the branches, the grass, the flowers, the fruits and\ndown to the very bodies of the subjects studied; for we sometimes find\na treble superposition of parasites, as in the Oil-beetles; and we see\nthe maggot itself, the sinister guest at the last feast of all, feed\nsome thirty brigands with its substance.\n\nAmong the Hymenoptera, which represent the most intellectual class in\nthe world which we are studying, the building-talents of our wonderful\nHive-bee are certainly equalled, in other orders of architecture,\nby those of more than one wild and solitary bee and notably by the\nMegachile, or Leaf-cutter, a little insect which is nothing to look\nat and which, to house its eggs, manufactures honey-pots formed of a\nmultitude of disks and ellipses cut with mathematical precision from\nthe leaves of certain trees. For lack of space, I am unable, to my\ngreat regret, to quote the beautiful and pellucid pages which Fabre,\nwith his usual conscientiousness, devotes to the exhaustive study of\nthis admirable work; nevertheless, since the occasion offers, let us\nlisten to his own words, though it be but for a moment and in regard to\na single detail:\n\n  \u201cWith the oval pieces, it becomes another matter. What model has the\n  Megachile when cutting her neat ellipses out of the delicate material\n  for her wallets, the robinia-leaves? What ideal pattern guides her\n  scissors? What system of measurement tells her the dimension? One\n  would like to picture the insect as a living pair of compasses,\n  capable of tracing an elliptic curve by a certain natural inflexion\n  of its body, even as our arm traces a circle by swinging from the\n  shoulder. A blind mechanism, the mere outcome of its organization,\n  would alone be responsible for its geometry. This explanation would\n  tempt me if the large oval pieces were not accompanied by much\n  smaller ones, also oval, which are used to fill the empty spaces. A\n  pair of compasses which changes its radius of its own accord and\n  alters the curve according to the plan before it appears to me an\n  instrument somewhat difficult to believe in. There must be something\n  better than that. The circular pieces of the lid suggest it to us.\n\n  \u201cIf, by the mere flexion inherent in her structure, the Leaf-cutter\n  succeeds in cutting out ovals, how does she manage to cut out rounds?\n  Can we admit the presence of other wheels in the machinery for the\n  new pattern, so different in shape and size? However, the real point\n  of the difficulty does not lie there. Those rounds, for the most\n  part, fit the mouth of the jar with almost exact precision. When the\n  cell is finished, the bee flies hundreds of yards away to make the\n  lid. She arrives at the leaf from which the disk is to be cut. What\n  picture, what recollection has she of the pot to be covered? Why,\n  none at all: she has never seen it; she does her work underground, in\n  utter darkness! At the utmost, she can have the indications of touch:\n  not actual indications, of course, for the pot is not there, but\n  past indications, useless in a work of precision. And yet the disk to\n  be cut out must have a fixed diameter: if it were too large, it would\n  not go in; if too small, it would close badly, it would slip down on\n  the honey and suffocate the egg. How shall it be given its correct\n  dimensions without a pattern? The bee does not hesitate for a moment.\n  She cuts out her disk with the same celerity which she would display\n  in detaching any shapeless lobe that might do for a stopper; and\n  that disk, without further measurement, is of the right size to fit\n  the pot. Let whoso will explain this geometry, which in my opinion\n  is inexplicable, even when we allow for memory begotten of touch and\n  sight.\u201d\n\nLet us add that the author calculated that, to form the cells of a\nkindred Megachile, the Silky Megachile, exactly 1,064 of these ellipses\nand disks would be required; and they must all be collected and shaped\nin the course of an existence that lasts a few weeks.\n\n\n8\n\nWho would imagine that the Pentatoma, on the other hand, the poor and\nevil-smelling Wood-bug, has invented a really extraordinary apparatus\nwherewith to leave the egg? And first let us state that this egg is\na marvellous little box of snowy whiteness, which our author thus\ndescribes:\n\n  \u201cThe microscope discovers a surface engraved with dents similar to\n  those of a thimble and arranged with exquisite symmetry. At the\n  top and bottom of the cylinder is a wide belt of a dead black; on\n  the sides, a large white zone with four big, black spots evenly\n  distributed. The lid, surrounded by snowy cilia and encircled with\n  white at the edge, swells into a black cap with a white knot in the\n  centre. Altogether, a striking burial urn, with the sudden contrast\n  between the coal-black and the fleecy white. The Etruscans would have\n  found a magnificent model here for their funeral pottery.\u201d\n\nThe little bug, whose forehead is too soft, covers her head, to raise\nthe lid of the box, with a mitre formed of three triangular rods, which\nis always at the bottom of the egg at the moment of delivery. Her limbs\nbeing sheathed like those of a mummy, she has nothing wherewith to put\nher rods in motion except the pulsations produced by the rhythmic flow\nof blood in her skull and acting after the manner of a piston. The\nrivets of the lid gradually give way; and, as soon as the insect is\nfree, it lays aside its mechanical helmet.\n\nAnother species of bug, _Reduvius personatus_, who lives mostly in\nlumber-rooms, where she lies hidden in the dust, has invented a still\nmore astonishing system of hatching. Here, the lid of the egg is not\nriveted, as in the case of the Pentatomae, but simply glued. At the\nmoment of liberation, the lid rises and we see:\n\n  \u201c... a spherical vesicle emerge from the shell and gradually expand,\n  like a soap-bubble blown through a straw. Driven farther and farther\n  back by the extension of this bladder, the lid falls.\n\n  \u201cThen the bomb bursts; in other words, the blister, swollen beyond\n  its capacity of resistance, rips at the top. This envelope, which is\n  an extremely tenuous membrane, generally remains clinging to the edge\n  of the orifice, where it forms a high, white rim. At other times,\n  the explosion loosens it and flings it outside the shell. In those\n  conditions, it is a dainty cup, half spherical, with torn edges,\n  lengthened out below into a delicate, winding stalk.\u201d\n\nNow, how is this miraculous explosion produced? Fabre assumes that:\n\n  \u201cVery slowly, as the tiny creature takes shape and grows, this\n  bladder-shaped reservoir receives the products of the work of\n  respiration performed under the cover of the outer membrane. Instead\n  of being expelled through the egg-shell, the carbonic acid, the\n  incessant result of the vital oxidization, is accumulated in this\n  sort of gasometer, inflates and distends it and presses upon the lid.\n  When the insect is ripe for hatching, a superadded activity in the\n  respiration completes the inflation, which perhaps has been preparing\n  since the first evolution of the germ. At last, yielding to the\n  increasing pressure of the gaseous bladder, the lid becomes unsealed.\n  The chick in its shell has its air-chamber; the young Reduvius has\n  its bomb of carbonic acid: it frees itself in the act of breathing.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\nOne would never weary of dipping eagerly into these inexhaustible\ntreasures. We imagine, for instance, that, from seeing cobwebs so\nfrequently displayed in all manner of places, we possess adequate\nnotions of the genius and methods of our familiar spiders. Far from\nit: the realities of scientific observation call for an entire volume\ncrammed with revelations of which we had no conception. I will simply\nname, at random, the symmetrical arches of the Clotho Spider\u2019s nest,\nthe astonishing funicular flight of the young of our Garden Spider, the\ndiving-bell of the Water Spider, the live telephone-wire which connects\nthe web with the leg of the Cross Spider hidden in her parlour and\ninforms her whether the vibration of her toils is due to the capture of\na prey or a caprice of the wind.\n\nIt is impossible, therefore, short of having unlimited space at one\u2019s\ndisposal, to do more than touch, as it were with the tip of the\nphrases, upon the miracles of maternal instinct, which, moreover, are\nconfounded with those of the higher manufactures and form the bright\ncentre of the insect\u2019s psychology. One would, in the same way, require\nseveral chapters to convey a summary idea of the nuptial rites which\nconstitute the quaintest and most fabulous episodes of these new\nArabian Nights.\n\nThe male of the Spanish Fly, for instance, begins by frenziedly\nbeating his spouse with his abdomen and his feet, after which, with\nhis arms crossed and quivering, he remains long in ecstasy. The\nnewly-wedded Osmiae clap their mandibles terribly, as though it were a\nmatter rather of devouring each other; on the other hand, the largest\nof our moths, the Great Peacock, who is the size of a bat, when drunk\nwith love finds his mouth so completely atrophied that it becomes no\nmore than a vague shadow. But nothing equals the marriage of the Green\nGrasshopper, of which I cannot speak here, for it is doubtful whether\neven Latin possesses the words needed to describe it seemingly.\n\nAll said, the marriage-customs are dreadful and, contrary to that\nwhich happens in every other world, here it is the female of the pair\nthat stands for strength and intelligence and also for the cruelty\nand tyranny which appear to be their inevitable outcome. Almost every\nwedding ends in the violent and immediate death of the husband. Often,\nthe bride begins by eating a certain number of suitors. The prototype\nof these fantastic unions could be supplied by the Languedocian\nScorpions, who, as we know, carry lobster-claws and a long tail\nsupplied with a sting, the prick of which is extremely dangerous. They\nhave a prelude to the festival in the shape of a sentimental stroll,\nclaw in claw; then, motionless, with fingers still gripped, they\ncontemplate each other blissfully, interminably; day and night pass\nover their ecstasy, while they remain face to face, petrified with\nadmiration. Next, the foreheads come together and touch; the mouths--if\nwe can give the name of mouth to the monstrous orifice that opens\nbetween the claws--are joined in a sort of kiss; after which the union\nis accomplished, the male is transfixed with a mortal sting and the\nterrible spouse crunches and gobbles him up with gusto.\n\nBut the Mantis, the ecstatic insect with the arms always raised in an\nattitude of supreme invocation, the horrible _Mantis religiosa_ or\nPraying Mantis, does better still: she eats her husbands (for the\ninsatiable creature sometimes consumes seven or eight in succession)\nwhile they strain her passionately to their heart. Her inconceivable\nkisses devour, not in a metaphorical, but in an appallingly real\nfashion, the ill-fated choice of her soul stomach. She begins with\nthe head, goes down to the thorax, nor stops till she comes to the\nhind-legs, which she deems too tough. She then pushes away the\nunfortunate remains, while a new lover, who was quietly awaiting the\nend of the monstrous banquet, heroically steps forward to undergo the\nsame fate.\n\n\n10\n\nHenri Fabre is indeed the revealer of this new world, for, strange\nas the admission may seem at a time when we think that we know all\nthat surrounds us, most of those insects minutely described in the\nvocabularies, learnedly classified and barbarously christened, had\nhardly ever been observed in real life or thoroughly investigated in\nall the phases of their brief and evasive appearances. He has devoted\nto surprising their little secrets, which are the reverse of our\ngreatest mysteries, fifty years of a solitary existence, misunderstood,\npoor, often very near to penury, but lit up every day by the joy\nwhich a truth brings, which is the greatest of all human joys. Petty\ntruths, I shall be told, those presented by the habits of a spider or a\ngrasshopper. There are no petty truths to-day; there is but one truth,\nwhose looking-glass, to our uncertain eyes, seems broken, though its\nevery fragment, whether reflecting the evolution of a planet or the\nflight of a bee, contains the supreme law.\n\nAnd these truths thus discovered had the good fortune to be grasped\nby a mind which knew how to understand what they themselves can but\nambiguously express, to interpret what they are obliged to conceal and,\nat the same time, to appreciate the shimmering beauty, almost invisible\nto the majority of mankind, that shines for a moment around all that\nexists, especially around that which still remains very close to nature\nand has hardly left its primeval sanctuary.\n\nTo make of these long annals the generous and delightful work of\nliterature that they are and not the monotonous and arid record of\nfinical descriptions and trivial acts that they might have been,\nvarious and so to speak conflicting gifts were needed. To the patience,\nthe precision, the scientific minuteness, the protean and practical\ningenuity, the energy of a Darwin in the face of the unknown, to the\nfaculty of expressing what has to be expressed with order, clearness\nand certainty, the venerable anchorite of S\u00e9rignan adds many of those\nqualities which are not to be acquired, certain of those innate good\npoetic virtues which cause his sure and supple prose, though a trifle\nprovincial, a trifle antiquated, a trifle primitive, to take its place\namong the excellent prose of the day, prose of the kind that has its\nown atmosphere, in which we breathe gratefully and tranquilly and\nwhich we find only in masterpieces.\n\nLastly, there was needed--and this was not the least requirement of\nthe work--a mind ever ready to cope with the riddles which, among\nthose little objects, rise up at every step as enormous as those which\nfill the skies and perhaps more numerous, more imperious and more\nstrange, as though nature had here given a freer scope to her last\nwishes and an easier outlet to her secret thoughts. Fabre shrinks from\nnone of those boundless problems which are persistently put to us by\nall the inhabitants of that tiny world where mysteries are heaped up\nin a denser and more bewildering fashion than in any other. He thus\nmeets and faces, turn by turn, the redoubtable questions of instinct\nand intelligence, of the origin of species, of the harmony or the\naccidents of the universe, of the life lavished upon the abysses of\ndeath, without counting the no less vast, but so to speak more human\nproblems which, among infinite others, are inscribed within the\nrange, if not within the grasp, of our intelligence: parthenogenesis;\nthe prodigious geometry of the wasps and bees; the logarithmic spiral\nof the snail; the antennary sense; the miraculous force which, in\nabsolute isolation, without the possible introduction of anything from\nthe outside, increases the volume of the Minotaurus\u2019 egg tenfold,\nwhere it lies, and, during seven to nine months, nourishes with an\ninvisible and spiritual food, not the lethargy, but the active life of\nthe scorpion and of the young of the Lycosa and the Clotho Spider. He\ndoes not attempt to explain them by one of those generally-acceptable\ntheories, such as that of evolution, which merely shifts the ground\nof the difficulty and which, I may say in passing, emerges from these\nvolumes in a somewhat sorry plight, after being sharply confronted with\nincontestable facts.\n\n\n11\n\nWaiting for chance or a god to enlighten us, he is able, in the\npresence of the unknown, to preserve that great religious and\nattentive silence which is dominant in the best minds of the day. There\nare those who say:\n\n\u201cNow that you have reaped a plentiful harvest of details, you should\nfollow up analysis with synthesis and generalize the origin of instinct\nin an all-embracing view.\u201d\n\nTo these he replies, with the humble and magnificent loyalty that\nillumines all his work:\n\n  \u201cBecause I have stirred a few grains of sand on the shore, am I in a\n  position to know the depths of the ocean?\n\n  \u201cLife has unfathomable secrets. Human knowledge will be erased from\n  the archives of the world before we possess the last word that a Gnat\n  has to say to us....\n\n  \u201cSuccess is for the loud talkers, the self-convinced dogmatists;\n  everything is admitted on condition that it be noisily proclaimed.\n  Let us throw off this sham and recognize that, in reality, we\n  know nothing about anything, if things were probed to the bottom.\n  Scientifically, Nature is a riddle without a definite solution to\n  satisfy man\u2019s curiosity. Hypothesis follows on hypothesis; the\n  theoretical rubbish-heap accumulates; and truth ever eludes us. To\n  know how not to know might well be the last word of wisdom.\u201d\n\nEvidently, this is hoping too little. In the frightful pit, in the\nbottomless funnel wherein whirl all those contradictory facts which\nare resolved in obscurity, we know just as much as our cave-dwelling\nancestors; but at least we know that we do not know. We survey the\ndark faces of all the riddles, we try to estimate their number, to\nclassify their varying degrees of dimness, to obtain an idea of their\nposition and their extent. That already is something, pending the\nday of the first gleams of light. In any case, it means doing in the\npresence of the mysteries all that the most upright intelligence can do\nto-day; and that is what the author of this incomparable Iliad does,\nwith more confidence than he professes. He gazes at them attentively.\nHe wears out his life in surprising their most minute secrets. He\nprepares for them, in his thoughts and in ours, the field necessary for\ntheir evolutions. He increases the consciousness of his ignorance in\nproportion to their importance and learns to understand more and more\nthat they are incomprehensible.\n\n\n\n\nEVIL-SPEAKING\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nEVIL-SPEAKING\n\n\n1\n\n\u201cSee no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,\u201d say the three sacred\nmonkeys carved over the gate of the Buddhist temple of Iyeyasu at Nikko.\n\nWe all of us speak ill of one another:\n\n  \u201cNo one,\u201d Pascal remarks, \u201cspeaks of us in our presence as he does in\n  our absence. The union that exists among men is based solely on this\n  mutual deceit; and few friendships would survive if each knew what\n  his friend says when he is not there, though he be speaking of him in\n  all sincerity and without passion.\n\n  \u201cI lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what they say of one\n  another, there would not be four friends in this world.\u201d\n\nIf you do away with evil-speaking, you do away with three-fourths of\nour conversation; and an unbearable silence will hover over every\ngathering. Evil-speaking or calumny--for it is extremely difficult to\nseparate the two sisters; and in reality any evil-speaking is likely to\nbe calumnious, inasmuch as we know others even less well than we know\nourselves--evil-speaking, which feeds all that creates disunion between\nmen and poisons their intercourse, is nevertheless the chief motive\nthat brings them together and enables them to enjoy the pleasures of\nsociety.\n\nBut the ravages which it wreaks all around us are too well-known and\nhave too often been described to make it necessary for us to portray\nthem once again. Let us here consider only the harm which it does to\nhim who indulges in it. It accustoms him to see only the petty sides\nof men and things; little by little it conceals from him the bold\noutlines, the great unities, the heights and depths containing the only\ntruths that count and endure.\n\nIn reality, the evil which we find in others, the evil which we speak\nof them, exists within ourselves: from ourselves we derive it; upon\nourselves it recoils. We perceive clearly only those defects which are\nours, or which we are on the point of acquiring. Within ourselves is\nkindled the evil flame whose reflection we perceive on others. Each of\nus diligently searches out, among those who surround him, the vice or\nthe defect that reveals to the clear-sighted the vice or the defect\nto which he himself is thrall. There is no more ingenuous or intimate\nconfession, even as there is no better examination of conscience, than\nto ask one\u2019s self:\n\n\u201cWhat is the fault which I most willingly impute to my neighbour?\u201d\n\nYou may be sure that this is the fault which you are most inclined to\ncommit and that you most readily see what is happening in the shallows\nto which you yourself are descending. He who speaks ill of others is,\nin short, merely his own traducer; and evil-speaking is, in essence,\nbut the story of our own falls, transposed or anticipated.\n\n\n2\n\nWe surround ourselves with all the evil that we attribute to the\nvictims of our gossip. It takes form at our own expense; it lives\nand feeds upon the best of our substance; it accumulates all about\nus, peopling and encumbering our atmosphere with phantoms, at first\ngrotesque, inconsistent, docile, timid and ephemeral, which gradually\nbecome persistent, add to their strength and stature, speak with louder\nvoice and develop into very real and imperious entities which ere long\nwill issue orders and assume the direction of most of our thoughts and\nactions. We are less and less masters in our own houses; we feel our\ncharacter slowly sapped of its strength; and we find ourselves sooner\nor later enclosed within a sort of enchanted circle which it is all but\nimpossible to break, a circle in which we no longer know whether we are\ndefaming our brethren because we are growing as bad as they, or whether\nwe are growing bad because we defame them.\n\n\n3\n\nWe should accustom ourselves to judge all men as we judge the heroes\nof this war. It is certain that, if any one had the pitiful courage to\nundertake their belittlement, he would find, in any gathering of these\nmen, almost as many vices, pettinesses or blemishes as in any human\ngathering chosen at random in any town or village. He would tell you\nthat it contained hopeless drunkards, unscrupulous libertines, uncouth,\nnarrow and greedy peasants, mean and rapacious shopkeepers, callous,\nlewd and cheating artisans, sordid, envious clerks and, among young men\nof better birth, idle, presumptuous, selfish and arrogant wastrels.\nHe would add that many of them did their duty only because there was\nno way of avoiding it; that they went forward, despite themselves,\nto brave a death which they hoped to escape, because they well knew\nthat they could not escape the death which would threaten them if they\nrefused to face the first. He might say all this and many other things\nwhich would appear more or less true; but there is something far more\ntrue, which is the great and magnificent truth that enfolds and uplifts\nall the rest: it is the thing which they really did; it is the fact\nthat they willingly offered themselves to death in order to accomplish\nwhat they regarded as a duty. It cannot be denied: if all those who\nhad vices and imperfections and the desire to shun danger had refused\nto accept the sacrifice, no force in the world could have compelled\nthem to it; for they would represent a force at least equal to that\nwhich would have sought to impel them. We must therefore believe that\nthese imperfections, these vices, these ignoble desires were very\nsuperficial and in any case incomparably less powerful and less deeply\nrooted than the great flood of feeling which carried all before it.\nAnd this is why, when we think of those dead or mutilated heroes, the\npetty thoughts which I have described do not even enter our minds. And\nit is right that this should be so. In the heroic whole they count\nfor no more than rain-drops in the ocean. All has been swept away,\nall has been made equal by sacrifice, suffering and death, in the one\nuntarnished beauty.\n\nBut let us not forget that it is almost the same with all men; and\nthat these heroes were not of a different nature from the neighbour\nwhom we are incessantly villifying. Death has purified and consecrated\nthem; but we are all of us daily in the presence of the sacrifice, the\nsuffering and, above all, the death which will purify and consecrate\nus in our turn. We are almost all subject to the same ordeals which,\nbecause they are less frequent and less glorious, appeal no less to the\nsame profound virtues; and, if so many men, chosen at hazard from among\nus, have proved themselves worthy of our admiration, it is because,\nafter all, we are doubtless better than we seem; for, while those\nothers mingled in our life, even they did not appear to be much better\nthan ourselves.\n\n\n\n\nOF GAMBLING\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nOF GAMBLING\n\n\n1\n\n_Paulo minora._ This essay, I need hardly say, consists of notes made\nbefore the war and put in order now, at a time when victory allows our\nthoughts to stray for a moment from the great tragedy in which the\ndestinies of mankind have been at stake. For the rest, the subject,\nhowever frivolous it may at first sight appear, sometimes touches or\nseems to touch problems which it is not unfitting to examine, were\nit only to realize that they are perhaps illusive. Moreover it is\nunfortunately probable that, when peace is restored, our allies will\nvisit in too numerous and confiding crowds the dubious havens of\ndelight which we are about to enter. I have no pretension to serve them\nas a guide nor to teach them how to fight against the whims of fortune;\nbut a handful of them may find in these lines, if not useful hints or\nprofitable advice, at least some few reflections or observations which\nwill pave the way for their own experiments or render them easier.\n\n\n2\n\nLet us then pay a last visit to one of those green tables which spread\ntheir length in the somewhat disreputable place of which I have written\nelsewhere[2] as the \u201cTemple of Chance.\u201d To-day I would rather call\nit the Factory of Chance, for it is here that, for more than half a\ncentury, without respite or repose, on weekdays, Sundays and holidays\nalike, daily from ten o\u2019clock in the morning till twelve o\u2019clock at\nnight, with croupiers unintermittently relieving one another, men have\nobstinately manufactured Chance and doggedly consulted the formless and\nfeatureless god that shrouds good luck and ill within his shadow.\n\nWe do not yet know what he is nor what he wants; we are not even sure\nthat he exists; but surely it would be astonishing if no result of any\nkind, no clue to the tantalizing puzzle, had emerged from this endless\neffort, the most gigantic, the most costly, the most methodical that\nhas ever been made on the brink of this gloomy abyss, if nothing had\nbeen born of all this furious work, however trivial, however unhealthy\nand useless it may appear.\n\nIn any case, at these tables, as at all places where passions become\nintensified, we are able to make interesting observations and, among\nother things, to behold at first hand, violently foreshortened and\nharshly illuminated, certain aspects of man\u2019s lifelong struggle with\nthe unknown. The drama, which as a rule is long drawn out, projecting\nitself into space and time and breaking up amid circumstances that\nescape our eyes, is here knit together, gathered into a ball, held,\nso to speak, in the hollow of the hand. But, for all its speed, its\nabruptness of movement and its extreme compression, it remains as\ncomplex and mysterious as those which go on indefinitely. Until the\nivory ball that rolls and hops around the wheel falls into its red or\nblack compartment, the unknown veiling its choice or its destiny is as\nimpenetrable as that which hides from us the choice or the destiny of\nthe stars. The movements of the planets can be calculated almost to a\nsecond; but no mathematical operation can measure or predict the course\nof the little white ball.\n\nYour most skilful players, indeed, have given up trying. Not one of\nthem any longer seriously relies on intuition, presentiment, second\nsight, telepathy, psychic forces or the calculation of probabilities\nin the attempt to foresee or determine the fall of a destiny no larger\nthan a hazel-nut. All the scientific part of human knowledge has\nfailed; and all the occult and magical side of that same knowledge has\nbeen equally unsuccessful. The mathematicians, the prophets, the seers,\nthe sorcerers, the sensitives, the mediums, the psychometrists, the\nspiritualists who call upon the dead for assistance, all alike are\nblind, confounded and impotent before the wheel and before Destiny\u2019s\nthirty-seven compartments. Here Chance reigns supreme; and hitherto,\nthough it all happens before our eyes, though it is repeated to satiety\nand may be held, let me say once more, in the hollow of our hand, no\none has yet been able to determine a single one of its laws.\n\n\n3\n\nYet such laws seem to exist; and thousands of players have ruined\nthemselves in following their forms or their elusive and deceptive\ntraces. Let us take a bundle of those records or _permanences_,\npublished at Monte Carlo, which give day by day the list of\nall the numbers that have come up at one of the roulette or\n_trente-et-quarante_ tables. As everybody knows, these numbers are\narranged in long parallel columns, the black on the left and the red\non the right. When we look at one of these sheets, containing as a\nrule ten columns of sixty-five numbers each--dead and harmless cyphers\nnow, though once so dangerous, once destructive of so many hopes and\nperhaps inspiring more than one disaster--we observe a tendency towards\na fairly perceptible equilibrium between the red and the black. Most\noften the two chances balance each other, singly or in little groups,\na black, a red, two blacks, three reds, three blacks, two reds and so\non. When we come upon a series of five, six, seven, eight, sometimes\neight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve consecutive blacks, we are almost\ncertain of finding not far away a compensating series of five, six,\nseven, eight or ten reds. There is a very real rhythm, a sort of\nbreathing or a cadenced movement to and fro of the mysterious creature\nwhich we call Chance. This rhythm or balance is moreover confirmed by\nthe final statistics of the day, from which we learn that, in a total\nof six hundred and so many spins of the ball, the difference between\nthe black and the red very seldom exceeds twenty or thirty; and this\ndifference is even smaller in the total for the week, that is to say,\nin a total of nearly five thousand spins, when it is usually reduced to\na few units.\n\n\n4\n\nThe monster has other strange habits. We see, for instance, that it is\nnot uncommon for a number to come up twice in succession; and it is\nundeniable that, in each day\u2019s play, two or three numbers are obviously\nfavoured, so much so that we may hurl out a challenge to logic and\ndeclare that the more frequently a number occurs the more chances it\nhas of reappearing. This seems to conflict with the law of equilibrium\nwhich we have remarked; but it must be observed that this equilibrium\nwill be recovered later, that by the end of the week the difference\nwill no longer be very great and that they will almost disappear when\nthe month is over. The equilibrium is more slowly restored because we\nmust multiply the number of series by eighteen and a half to reach the\nproportions of the even chances.\n\nPlayers note yet another law which, for that matter, is but a corollary\nof the former habit, but which has something curiously human about it:\nthe chances which lag behind show a greater eagerness to regain their\nlost ground at the moment that follows more or less closely upon a\nhalt, as though they had recovered their breath after a brief rest on\nthe landing of a staircase.\n\nLet us add at once that it is wise to distrust these fluctuating habits\nand these gropings after laws. For instance, red has been known to beat\nblack by seventy per cent. in the course of a day\u2019s play. Black, on\nthe other hand, as people still remember at Monte Carlo, one day came\nup twenty-nine times in succession and the second dozen twenty-eight\ntimes without a break. Chance has not our nerves; it is not, like us,\nimpatient to make good its losses or to carry off its gains. It takes\nits time, awaits its hour and does not trouble to keep step with our\nways of life.\n\n\n5\n\nPlayers as a rule attribute these habits or caprices to a trick of the\ncroupier\u2019s hand. This is hardly tenable. After all, we know how the\nthing is done. The ball drops into its compartment and the croupier\nannounces, for instance:\n\n\u201c13, black, _impair_ and manque.\u201d\n\nThe losses are raked in, the winnings are paid out, the players renew\ntheir stakes, there is sometimes a brief dispute, somebody asks for\nchange and so on. These operations vary a good deal in length; and\nall this time the wheel carrying the ball is making hundreds of\nrevolutions. The croupier stops it at last, takes the ball, reverses\nthe wheel and sends the ball spinning in the opposite direction. It is\nimpossible under these conditions for his particular trick of the hand\nto exercise any influence whatever. Besides, we can easily see from\nthe chart of the _permanences_ that the change of croupier does not\nperceptibly affect the rhythm of the even chances. It is not the man\nwho controls the rhythm but the rhythm that controls the man.\n\n\n6\n\nThese gropings after laws in what would seem a negation of all or any\nlaw; these strivings on the part of Chance to quit its own domain\nand to organize its chaos; this god who denies himself and seeks to\ndestroy himself by his own hand; these incomprehensible stammerings,\nthese awkward efforts to achieve utterance and assume consciousness are\nrather curious, we must admit. For the rest, it is these efforts, these\nhankerings after equilibrium, this embryonic rhythm that constitute\nthe gamblers\u2019 good and bad luck. If Chance were simply Chance as we\nconceive it on first principles, one would stake any sum anyhow and\nat any moment. I am well aware that, according to the most learned\ntheorists on roulette, each _coup_ is independent of all the others\nand begins as if nothing had happened before, as if nothing were to\nhappen afterwards, as if the table were fresh from the shop, the wheel\nfrom the factory and the croupier from the hands of God. In theory\nthis is quite accurate; but we have just seen that in practice it does\nnot seem to be so. For that matter, it seems impossible to explain the\nreason. Players are satisfied to observe the fact, while yielding to\na dangerous but very human tendency to exaggerate the scope and the\ncertainty of their observations.\n\nThey are too ready to see laws where there is only a mass of\ncoincidences as fleeting as clouds. It is of course necessary that\nthe reds and blacks, emerging successively from nowhere, should find\na place somewhere and form certain groups; and, if it is rather\nsurprising that at the end of the month their numbers are nearly equal,\nit would be no less surprising if one of the colours were to prevail\nlargely over the other. It is perfectly true that, at first sight, the\nreds and blacks seem to balance on the _permanence_ sheets; but it is\nalso true that, when we examine more closely, a series of five or six\nreds, for instance, interrupted by one or two blacks, not infrequently\nbegins a fresh run; and ill-luck may well have it that, at this moment,\nthe player, in his search for equilibrium, will start punting on the\nblack and in a few _coups_ behold the disappearance of all the winnings\nslowly and laboriously wrested from Chance, which is niggardly when one\nis winning and extremely generous--to the bank--when one is losing. For\nthat matter, he will suffer the same disappointment if he bets on the\nvariation, in other words, against the equilibrium, and will too often\ndiscover that these laws, when he puts his trust in them, are writ in\nwater, whereas they seem to be graven in bronze so soon as they betray\nhim.\n\n\n7\n\nIn order to profit by these laws, which are perhaps fallacious and in\nany case untrustworthy, and to secure himself against their treachery,\nhe has contrived a host of ingenious systems which sometimes enable him\nto win but most often merely retard his ruin.\n\nBut, before speaking of these systems, let us begin by saying that\nwe shall concern ourselves here only with the even chances, red or\nblack, _pair_ or _impair_, _passe_ or _manque_. These are sufficiently\ncomplicated in themselves and set us problems that would be enough\nto exhaust all the shrewdness of a human life. As for any other than\nthe even chances, _en plein_, _\u00e0 cheval_, _transversales_, _carr\u00e9s_,\n_douzaines_ and so forth, these, both in theory and in practice, escape\nall control, calculation or explanation.\n\nWhatever system he adopt, the gambler is always tossing heads or tails\nagainst the bank. He has a chance and the bank has a chance; but zero\ngives the bank odds against him; and, though zero is apparently a very\nmild tax, since at _rouge-et-noir_ in thirty-six chances the bank has\nonly half a chance more than the player, it is bound to be ruinous in\nthe end. To escape the abruptness of a decision which, if he placed\nall that he possessed on the red or the black, would end the game at a\nsingle stroke, the player divides his stake, so as to be able to defy a\nlarge number of chances, hoping that, thanks to a skilfully graduated\nprogression, he will end by lighting on a favourable series in which\nthe gains will exceed the losses. This is the underlying principle of\nall the systems, which are never anything but more or less ingenious,\nprudent and complicated martingales. There are not, there never will be\nany others, in the absence of a miracle which has not yet occurred, of\nan intuition which foresees what the ball will decide, or of an unknown\nforce which will oblige it to act as a player wishes.\n\n\n8\n\nI have no intention of reviewing all these systems, which are\ninnumerable and of unequal value: the _paroli_ pure and simple, that\nartless, violent, doubled stake which leads straight to disaster;\nthe D\u2019Alembert and all its variants; the descending progressions; the\ndifferential methods; the _montant belge_; the _parolis intermittents_;\nthe snowball; the _photographie_; the staking of equal amounts on\ncertain groups of figures, which is a Chinese puzzle demanding days\nof patient observation before it is attacked; and many others which I\nforget, from the most clear-cut to the most mysterious, which are sold\nat a high price, to credulous beginners, in sealed envelopes containing\nwhat is everybody\u2019s secret and with all or nearly all of which I\nhave become acquainted thanks to the kindness of an erudite player.\nA detailed account of those most frequently used will be found in\nD\u2019Albigny\u2019s treatise _Les Martingales modernes_, in Gaston Vessillier\u2019s\n_Th\u00e9orie des syst\u00e8mes g\u00e9om\u00e9triques_, in Hulmann\u2019s _Trait\u00e9 des jeux\ndits de hasard_, in Th\u00e9o d\u2019Alost\u2019s _Th\u00e9orie scientifique nouvelle des\njeux de la roulette, trente-et-quarante, etc._, and, above all, in the\n_Revue de Monte Carlo_, which has given a system in every issue since\nthe day of its foundation some fifteen years ago.\n\nWhether mystic or transparent, all these methods present more or less\nthe same dangers, being all founded on the quicksands of equilibrium\nand temporary disturbance. If they are very cautious, the loss is\ntrifling, but the gain is still smaller; if they are bold, the gain is\ngreat, but the loss is two or three times greater. The best of them,\nin order to continue the defence of a moderate stake and of what has\nalready been sacrificed, involve the risking on the cloth, at a given\nmoment, of all the previous winnings, which are soon followed by the\nsums held in reserve. This is the inevitable revenge of the bank, at\nwhich you thought that you were nibbling with impunity, but which\nsuddenly opens wide its jaws, like a blind and drowsy crocodile, and\nswallows profits and capital at a single gulp.\n\n\n9\n\nThe players hearten themselves by maintaining that they have an\nincontestable advantage over the bank. They begin to play, they \u201cpunt\u201d\nwhen they like and as they like and they withdraw when they please,\nwhereas the bank is compelled to play without stopping, to accept every\nstake and to meet every _coup_ up to the limit of the maximum, which,\nas we know, is six thousand francs on the even chances. This advantage\nis a real one if the player, after winning a big sum, goes away and\ndoes not come back again. But the lucky gambler, even more infallibly\nthan the one who has no luck, will return to the enchanted table and\nin so doing loses the only elective weapon that he had against his\nenemy. To choose your time for punting is but an illusory privilege,\nbecause everything, at any moment, is equally shifting and uncertain;\nand you never know beforehand when the precarious and deceptive law of\nequilibrium will reassert itself. After a long sequence of blacks, you\nwager on a fine series of reds, a certain run, you would say; but no\nsooner have you staked your money than the series gives up the ghost\nand remorseless black resumes its devastating course; or else you do\nthe opposite: you bet on black and it is red that settles down for a\nrun. At whatever moment you start punting, you are always fighting\nred against black, that is to say, one to one. Once more, the only\nreal advantage is that you can go away when you like; but where is the\ngambler, whether losing or winning, who is able to go away and not come\nback?\n\n\n10\n\nAfter mature examination, all these systems merely carve the brutal\nand crushing mass of luck into small pieces. They act as a defensive\npadding against the blows of Chance, making them less grave. They\nprolong the player\u2019s life or his agony. They enable the owner of a\nmodest purse to stake as often as the multimillionaire, who would\nconfine himself to betting double or quits indefinitely, if he were\nnot stopped by the fatal barrier of the maximum. But all mathematical\noperations, all combinations of figures flutter and struggle like\nblind captives between bronze walls. They merely dash themselves\nin vain against these walls, whether black or red: both remain\ninvulnerable and impregnable; and from their imprisoning embrace there\nis no escape.\n\n\n11\n\nDoes this mean that there is no such thing as a defensible method\nand that the most skilful calculations have not revealed a means of\ndefeating Chance? In theory, I cannot bring myself to believe that\nbaseless calculations will ever do what they have not done up to the\npresent. It is none the less true that, in practice, we come upon\nsome which struggle with fair success against ill-luck. For instance,\na friend of mine, a British officer, has a system which he has been\nusing for a long time and which yields astonishing results. It is, of\ncourse, a progression, the whole of whose virtue lies in an ingenious\nand very simple key that seems to act as a sort of talisman. I have\nnot found this method in any of either the recognized or the catchpenny\ntreatises. It has its dangers, like the others; it has its difficult\nmoments, when, to save your anticipated profits and your earlier\nlosses, you have to risk a rather large amount. But, if you prudently\nstop playing during runs which are too obstinately hostile, if you\nallow the storm to pass as it spreads over a large number of chances,\nyou end by obtaining the necessary compensation. At any rate, it has\nnever seriously failed my friend so far.\n\n\n12\n\nNevertheless it must not be supposed that we have only to use this\nsystem blindly and automatically. As with other systems, a certain\nscience, a certain experience, a certain deftness are indispensable.\nThough science and experience are evasive qualities here, fugitive and\nat the mercy of Chance, they are by no means illusory. The careful and\nexperienced player understands how to approach and nurse his luck, or\nat least how not to thwart it. He guesses the beginning and the end\nof a favourable series. He foresees alternations and intermittences;\nand, when he does not succeed in grasping their rhythm, he prefers\nto abstain from playing, rather than encounter them inopportunely.\nHe makes more than one mistake, but makes far fewer than those who,\nfaithful to the very scientific theory of the absolute independence of\neach _coup_, back either colour at any moment. He does not surrender\nto the fixed rigidity of logic, he does not throw the gauntlet down to\nfate, he does not defy the animosity of fortune. He is never obstinate.\nHe does not struggle on, sullenly, to his last coin, against an\niniquitous run, in order to gain the bitter satisfaction of learning\nthe utmost depths of his ill-luck and the injustice of fate. He has\nno self-conceit, no prejudices, no inflexible opinions. He is docile,\nplastic and accommodating. Devoid of all false shame, he cheerfully\nabandons his pretensions and pays court to fortune. He retraces his\nsteps and retracts at fitting times. He stops, starts afresh, yields,\ntacks about, allows himself to be borne upon the tide and comes safely\nto harbour, while the arrogant, overbold and headstrong pilot founders\nin deep water.\n\nBeyond all else, he studies the character and temper of the table at\nwhich he takes his seat, for each table has its psychology, its habits,\nits history, which vary from day to day and yet by the end of the year\nform a homogeneous whole wherein all temporary errors, all anomalies\nand injustices are compensated. The question is to know on what page\nof this history he should prepare to play his part. He will not learn\nthis at once. It is of little use for him to peep at the notes and\n_permanences_ of the players who have come before him. What he wants is\nthe immediate contact, the very breath of the hidden god. But the god\nis already thrilling into life, taking shape and countenance, giving\na whispered hint of his intentions, speaking words of approval or\ncondemnation; and the tragic struggle begins between the player, so\ninfinitely small, and Chance, so enormous and omnipotent.\n\n\n13\n\nNow that the battle is joined, now that the player has done what he\ncould to summon and welcome luck, there is nothing left for him to do\nbut wait; for luck, when all is said, will remain the supreme power\nthat pronounces the final verdict, the formidable and inevitable\nunknown factor in every combination. The best of systems cannot\novercome an abnormal and pitiless run of bad luck which makes you stake\nincessantly on the losing colour. A run like this, without favourable\nintermittences, is extremely rare but always possible. It corresponds,\nfor that matter, with the extraordinary strokes of good luck, which\nseem more frequent only because they attract more attention. From time\nto time we see a man, or rather let me say a woman--for it is nearly\nalways female players who have these inspirations--walk up to the\ntable and with a high hand and not the least hesitation gamble _en\nplein_ or _en cheval_, on a _transversale_ or _carr\u00e9_, and win time\nafter time, as though she saw beforehand where the ball would fall.\nThese moments of intuition are always very brief; and, if the player\ninsists or grows stubborn, she will soon lose whatever she has won.\nIt is none the less true that, when we observe this very obvious and\nstriking phenomenon, we wonder whether there is not something more in\nit than mere coincidence. When all is said, can luck be anything other\nthan a passing and dazzling intuition of what will flash into actuality\nbefore everybody\u2019s eyes a second later? Is not the compartment which\ndoes not yet contain the little ball, but which in an instant will snap\nit up and hold it, is not this compartment already, somewhere, a thing\nof the present and even of the past? But these are questions which\nwould lead us too far afield in space and time.\n\n\n14\n\nBe this as it may, to return to the system of which we were speaking,\neven if I were at liberty to divulge its secret I should not do so.\nI am not a very austere moralist and I look upon gambling as one of\nthose profoundly human evils which we shall never be able to uproot\nand which, for all our efforts, will always reappear in a new form.\nStill, the least that we can do is not to encourage it. The gambler, I\nmean the inveterate, almost professional gambler, is not interesting.\nTo begin with, he is an idler and nearly always a part of the world\u2019s\nflotsam, with no justification for his existence. If he be rich, he\nis making the most foolish, the most dismal use of his money that can\nbe imagined. If he be poor, he is even less easily to be forgiven: he\nshould know better than to sacrifice his days and too often the welfare\nand the peace of mind of those dependent on him to a will-o\u2019-the-wisp.\nUnderlying the gambler we find too often a sluggard, an incompetent,\na boneless egoist, greedy of vulgar and unmerited pleasures, a\ndissatisfied and inefficient individual. Gambling is the stay-at-home,\nimaginary, squalid, mechanical, an\u00e6mic and unlovely adventure of those\nwho have never been able to encounter or create the real, necessary\nand salutary adventures of life. It is the feverish and unhealthy\nactivity of the wastrel. It is the purposeless and desperate effort of\nthe debilitated, who no longer possess or never possessed the courage\nand patience to make the honest, persevering effort, the unspasmodic,\nunapplauded effort which every human life demands.\n\nThere is also a great deal of puerile vanity about the gambler. Taken\nfor all in all, he is a child still seeking his place in the universe.\nHe has not yet realized his position. He thinks himself peerless in the\nface of destiny. In his self-infatuation he expects the unknown or the\nunknowable to do for him what it does not do for any one whomsoever.\nAnd he expects this for no reason, simply because he is himself and\nbecause others have not that privilege. He must tempt fate incessantly,\nhurriedly, anxiously, in I know not what idle and pretentious hope of\nlearning to know himself from without. Whatever fortune\u2019s decision\nmay be, he will find cause for preening himself. If he have no luck,\nhe will feel flattered because he is specially persecuted by fortune;\nif he be lucky, he will think all the more highly of himself because\nof the exceptional gifts which she bestows upon him. For the rest, he\ndoes not need to believe that he deserves these gifts; on the contrary,\nthe less right he has to them, the prouder he will be of them; and the\nunjust and manifestly undeserved chance which makes them his will form\nthe best part of the vainglorious satisfaction which he will contrive\nto extract from them.\n\n\n15\n\nIt would be extremely surprising, I said when I began, if this\nindefatigable and exhaustive enquiry into Chance, pursued for over\nfifty years, had failed to yield some sort of result. I am wondering,\nat the end of this investigation, what that result is. At the cost of\nan insane waste of money, time, physical, nervous and moral energy and\nspiritual forces perhaps more precious still, it has taught us that\nChance is in short Chance, that is to say, an aggregate of effects\nwhereof we do not know the causes. But we knew as much as this before;\nand our new discovery is a little derisory. We have seen the shadowy\nappearance of certain laws or habits from which a few players appear\nto derive advantage, though this advantage is always precarious. But\nthese apparent laws, which tend obscurely and uncertainly to instil a\nlittle order into Chance, are, like Chance itself, but inconsistent\nand ephemeral summaries of results from unknown causes. Upon the whole\nwe have learnt nothing, unless perhaps it be that we were wrong to\nattach greater importance to those manifestations of destiny than\nthey possess. If we look at them more closely, we find that there is\nnothing more behind all these catastrophes and all these mysteries of\nluck than the catastrophe and the mysteries which we put there. We link\nour fate to the fate of a little ball which is not responsible for it;\nand, because we entrust it for a moment with our fortune, we fondly\nimagine that mysterious moral powers are bent on directing and ending\nits course at the right or wrong moment. It knows nothing of all this;\nand, though the lives of thousands of men depended on its fall to the\nright or the left of the point at which it stops, it would not care. It\nhas laws of its own, which it must obey and which are so complex that\nwe do not even try to explain them. It is just a little ball, honestly\nseeking the little red or black hole in which to go to sleep and having\nnothing very much to tell us of the secrets of a luck or destiny which\nexist only within ourselves.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RIDDLE OF PROGRESS\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE RIDDLE OF PROGRESS\n\n\n1\n\nThis war, which is one such as had never yet been waged upon this\nearth of ours, leads us to consider the great problem of the future of\nmankind.\n\nDare we hope that humanity will one day renounce these monstrous\nfollies and that they will become altogether impossible? To this\nquestion, if we wish to meet it at its source, I see but one reply,\nwhich I have already given elsewhere and which I will here recapitulate\nand complete, namely, that we are engulfed in a universe which has no\nmore limit in time than it has in space, which had no beginning, as it\nwill have no end, and which has behind it as many myriads of myriads of\nyears as it discovers ahead of it. Yesterday\u2019s eternity and to-morrow\u2019s\nare precisely identical. All that the universe is going to do it must\nhave already done, for it has had as many opportunities of doing so as\nit will ever have. All the things that it has not done are things which\nit will never be able to do, because nothing will be added, in space\nor time, to what it has already possessed in space or time. It has\nnecessarily made in the past all the efforts and all the experiments\nwhich it will make in the future; and all that has gone before, having\nbeen subject to the same chances, is perforce the same as all that is\nto follow.\n\n\n2\n\nIt is probable, therefore, that there was once an infinity of worlds\nsimilar to our own, even as it is likely that there is an infinity of\nsuch similar worlds at present, the infinity of space being comparable\nwith that of time. These coincidences, however difficult for us to\npicture, must inevitably occur and recur in the immeasurable and the\ninnumerous in which we are immersed, that is, unless the infinity of\npossible combinations be less unlimited than those of time and space.\n\nThis is where our capacity of imagination halts, for it is easier for\nus to conceive the infinities of space and time than the infinity of\ncombinations. To obtain some idea of the latter, we should have to\nunderstand the substance and the nature, the laws and the forces, in a\nword, the whole riddle of existence. None the less is it true that this\npossible infinity of combinations is our only hope; without it there\nwould be nothing more to expect of a universe which obviously would\nhave tried and exhausted everything before our coming.\n\nBut, if this number of combinations is really infinite, it is open to\nus to say that the earth is an experiment which had not yet been made\nand an experiment which has failed, since suffering and evil have the\nupper hand of happiness and goodness. If the experiment has failed,\nwe are its victims; but we are not forbidden to hope that our efforts\nwill in some way modify combinations which will be more fortunate in\nother places or at another time. If the experiment has failed, it does\nnot follow that others have not succeeded and are not more fortunate,\nat this very moment, in other worlds than ours. We may even suppose\nthat, in the infinity of these combinations and experiments, the most\nsuccessful tend to become fixed and crystallized and that, in view of\ntheir infinite number, they will bring about successfully in the future\nwhat they have not brought about successfully in the past. This is a\nhazardous glimmer; but I doubt whether any others will be discovered to\nkeep us uplifted above despair.\n\n\n3\n\nLet us for a moment assume that the experiment of this world had not\nmiscarried as it has; that the mind of man, which, since the beginning,\nhas been struggling painfully against matter and winning but a few\nbrief, uncertain and precarious victories, were a million times more\npowerful and better-armed. It would no doubt have triumphed over all\nthat weighs us down and keeps us where we are; it would have freed\nitself from the apparently illusory fetters of space and time. It is\nnot unreasonable to admit that, among the myriads of worlds which\npeople the infinite, there are some in which these better conditions\nare realized. Perhaps, after all, it would be impossible to imagine\nanything that does not exist somewhere in reality, for we may very\nrightly maintain that our imaginings can be nothing more than stray\nreflections of things that already exist. Now, if we lived in one of\nthose worlds and if we could see, as we should perhaps be allowed\nto see, all that is happening at this moment on the earth which we\nnow inhabit and on others which are perhaps even worse and more\nunfortunate, it seems to us that we should know neither rest nor ease\nuntil we had intervened and helped to make it better and wiser and more\nhabitable.\n\n\n4\n\nFor that matter, no one can tell us that this is not so now and that\nall our spiritual victories, all that seems, at certain moments, to\nbe leading us towards a future less hideous than the past, all the\nmysterious currents of good that sometimes flow through our world, all\nthat awaits us after death, no one, I say, can tell us that all this is\nnot due to the intervention of one of those worlds. It is true that we\ncannot perceive the act of intervention, that we are hardly sensible\nof it; but it is also true that these creatures of a higher world,\nbeing of necessity less encumbered with matter and more spiritual than\nwe, must necessarily remain invisible to us. In the infinity of the\nfirmament we discover myriads of worlds that are material worlds like\nour own; and we are able to discover only these, because all that does\nnot more or less closely resemble our own world must needs escape us.\nBut the space lying between the stars, which to us appears void, is\ninfinitely wider than the space which they themselves occupy; and it\nwould be strange indeed if it were not filled with worlds which we\ncannot perceive at all, or rather if it were not itself one vast world\nwhich our eyes are incapable of taking in.\n\nIt is, moreover, thinkable that, if we do not see these other worlds,\nthey, not being material worlds, do not perceive matter and are\nconsequently as unaware of us as we are unaware of them; for we are\ndoubtless mistaken in believing that, because we are visible to one\nanother, we are necessarily visible to all other beings. On the\ncontrary, there is reason to presume that these spiritual beings pass\nthrough us without suspecting our presence and that, as they are\nconscious and sensible only of that which emanates from the spirit,\nthey do not suspect or discover our existence except in so far as we\napproach the conditions in which they exist.\n\n\n5\n\nConsider the earth in its origin: at first, a shapeless nebula,\nbecoming gradually more and more condensed; next, a globe of fire, of\nrocks in fusion, whirling for millions of years through space, with\nno other object than that of forming into a mass and cooling: an\ninconceivable incandescence, which none of our sources of heat can\nenable us to picture; an essential, scientific, absolute barrenness\nwhich may well have proclaimed itself irremediable and everlasting.\nWho would have thought that from these torrents of matter in eruption,\nwhich seemed to have destroyed for ever all life or the least germ of\nlife, there would emerge each and every form of life itself, from the\nmost enormous, the strongest, the most enduring, the most impetuous,\nthe most abundant, down to the slightest, the least visible, the most\nprecarious, the most ephemeral, the most exiguous? Who above all could\nhave dared foresee that they would give birth to what seems so utterly\nalien to the liquefied or pasty rocks and metals that alone formed the\nsurface, the nucleus and the very entity of our globe, I mean our human\nintelligence and consciousness?\n\n\n6\n\nIs it possible to imagine a more unexpected evolution and ending?\nWhat could astonish us after so great an astonishment and what are\nwe not entitled to hope of a world which, after being what it was,\nhas produced what we see and what we are? Considering that it started\nfrom a sort of negation of life, from integral barrenness and from\nworse than nothing, in order to end in us, where will it not end after\nstarting from ourselves? If its birth and formation have elaborated\nsuch prodigies, what prodigies may not its existence, its indefinite\nprolongation and its dissolution hold in store for us? There are an\nimmeasurable distance and inconceivable transformations between the\none frightful material of the early days and the human thought of\nthis moment; and there will doubtless be a like distance and like\ntransformations as difficult to conceive between the thought of this\nmoment and that which will succeed it in the infinity of time.\n\nIt seems as if, in the beginning, our earth did not know what to do\nwith its material and with its force, which inter-devoured each other.\nIn the vast, flaming void in which it was being consumed, it had not\nyet the shadow of an object or an idea; to-day, it has so many that\nour scholars wear out their lives to no purpose in seeking them and\nare overwhelmed by the number of its mysterious and inexhaustible\ncombinations.\n\nAt that time it disposed of but a single force, the most destructive\nthat we knew, fire. If everything was born of fire, which itself seemed\nto be born only to destroy, what will not be born of that which seems\nto be born only to produce, beget and multiply? If it was able to do so\nmuch with the lava and the red-hot cinders which were the only elements\nthat it possessed, what will it not be able to do with all that it will\nend by possessing?\n\n\n7\n\nIt is well sometimes to tell ourselves that we are at least living in a\nworld which has not yet exhausted its future and which is much nearer\nto its beginning than to its end. It was born only yesterday and has\nbut lately disentangled its original chaos. It is at the starting-point\nof its hopes and its experiments. We believe that it is making for\ndeath, whereas all its past, on the contrary, shows that it is much\nmore probably making for life. In any case, as its years pass by, the\nquantity and still more the quality of the life which it engenders\nand maintains tend to increase and to improve. It has given us only\nthe first-fruits of its miracles; and in all likelihood there is no\nmore connection between what it was and what it is than there will be\nbetween what it is and what it will be. No doubt, when its greatest\nmarvels burst into being, we shall no longer possess the lives which\nwe possess to-day; but we shall still be there under another form, we\nshall still be existing somewhere, on its surface or in its depths; and\nit is not utterly improbable that one of its last prodigies will reach\nus in our dust, awaken us and recall us to life, in order to impart to\nus at last the share of happiness which we had not enjoyed and to teach\nus that we were wrong not to interest ourselves, on the further side of\nour graves, in the destiny of this earth of ours, of which we had never\nceased to be the immortal offspring.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TWO LOBES\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nTHE TWO LOBES\n\n\n1\n\nA soldier writes me the following letter from the front:\n\n  \u201cThere are quagmires and skeletons in the forest. I have discovered\n  and admired the ruined gods under the still living and wonderful\n  vegetation: their spirit has evaporated. The odour of Christ has\n  little charm for me; I prefer that of Buddha. What I adore in him\n  is the fundamental contradiction that seeks to assure us of our\n  immortality by proving our inevitable annihilation. He taught,\n  in the same breath, the illusion of the Ego and its periodical\n  reincarnation, an obvious absurdity which implies a knowledge of the\n  profoundest truth, of the very nature of being, at the same time and\n  alternately collective and individual. This discovery, which he did\n  not formulate, should have led him elsewhere than to Nirvana, that\n  paradise of unripe fruits....\n\n  \u201cMan is so fashioned as to perceive only one half of the universe;\n  and the mind of ordinary texture sees barely a hemisphere of truth.\n  Afflicted with a congenital \u2018nervous headache,\u2019 humanity thinks with\n  only one half of its brain, with the eastern lobe or the western, the\n  ancient or the modern; its mind nibbles its own tail; the antinomies\n  pursue one another in an endless circle, which Kant believed that he\n  had discovered, but which Buddha had striven to open. He possessed\n  the complementary virtues; he was religious and rational; while he\n  summed up within himself the mysticism of the east, his was the most\n  scientific of the minds of antiquity, at a time when science did not\n  exist but was merged in philosophy. The moderns who have sought to\n  condense into a system the collective and hardly initiated effort\n  of science have pitiably failed, for they have thought only as\n  westerners, entangled in the contradiction of idealistic aspirations\n  and materialistic arguments, whereas Buddha\u2019s formula might still\n  and almost without breaking down contain this gigantic effort and\n  yet not hamper it. From the death of the prince-philosopher, down to\n  the flights of contemporary science, true thought has not advanced\n  one step; Arab or Christian spiritualism and its reagent, positivist\n  or scientific materialism, are recoils in contrary directions, false\n  monisms which, taking the extreme for the supreme, seek to fix the\n  centre of gravity on the circumference of the wheel. The explorers of\n  the Beyond must set out from the cross-roads of religious synthesis\n  and scientific analysis and drag these rival sisters by the hand.\n\n  \u201cTruth shines at the centre of a circle of onlookers and we must pass\n  through its flame to recognize a brother in the adversary opposite.\n  We must reach the centre of space to discern the identity of its\n  cardinal points: \u2018_Totum et Nihil, Alter et Ego_.\u2019 The longing to\n  convert others must yield to the need of completing and balancing\n  our own point of view. In the sacred forest, which pioneers have\n  penetrated on all sides and in all ages, the more greatly daring must\n  necessarily draw nearer one to the other. Even if they cannot meet,\n  they can hear one another and give one another mutual encouragement.\n  The most modest cry of discovery may be welcome in the solitude and\n  silence in which the truth of the future is ripening....\u201d\n\n\n2\n\nI thought it well to preserve this page. It sets forth, in a\nremarkable, though perhaps too rapid summary, two or three of the\ngreat problems which in reality are only one and to which, unless we\ngive up everything, we are bound to attempt the answer: the problems\nof immortality or annihilation, of flux and reflux, of existence\nalternatively collective and individual, of exteriorization and\ninteriorization, which make up the mighty cosmic rhythm whereof our\nlife and death are but infinitesimal pulsations.\n\n\n3\n\nBut let us begin by observing that the fundamental contradiction\nwhich seeks to assure us of our immortality by proving our inevitable\nannihilation is not to be found in Buddha and that it is not true to\nsay that he teaches in the same breath the illusion of the Ego and\nits periodical reincarnation. The doctrine of reincarnation is not\nBuddha\u2019s. He found it ready-made; it existed before him and was so\ndeeply rooted in his people that he does not even dream of disputing\nit. From the exoteric point of view, he tries only to disarm it, to\ndeprive it of its sting, to render it harmless. He tries to reduce\nlife to the point where it can find nothing wherewith to reincarnate\nitself. According to the exoteric doctrine, which is but a preparation\nfor esoteric truth, life is naught but suffering; and its only aim is\nthe redemption or the extinction of suffering. This extinction is\nto be found in Nirvana, which is not annihilation but the absorption\nof the individual into the universe. Ordinary death, by reason of\nthe perpetual reincarnation of the same individual, cannot suppress\nsuffering. We must therefore find a sort of superdeath, which makes\nany reincarnation impossible; and this superdeath can be obtained\nonly by the man who has been striving to die all his life long and\nwho has deliberately cut off all the ties that bind him to existence:\nall love, all hope, all desire, all possession. When, at the end of\nthis systematic and voluntary superdeath, the actual death arrives, it\nwill no longer find a living germ capable of achieving reincarnation.\nThis superdeath, thus obtained, will precede by many centuries or\nmillenaries purification, final redemption and the absorption into the\nabsolute One.\n\nIt has been said that this is exactly the reverse of the doctrine of\nChrist. With Buddha, life is only the gate of death; with Christ, death\nis the gate of life. In reality, it is the same thing and everything\nends by the absorption into the divine, for the doctrine of Christ is\nnothing more than a mutilated branch of the great trunk of the mother\nreligion.\n\nHere we have the solution offered to us by the most wonderful mind,\nthe greatest sage that humanity has ever known; by one who knew things\nwhich we no longer know and which, it may be, we shall never recover.\nIt is the foundation of the religion of five hundred millions of men.\nThere is nothing nearer to the ultimate truth.\n\n\n4\n\nLet us observe, however, that the problem of immortality or\nannihilation ought not to be set in these terms, since the word\nannihilation cannot be employed, save in a metaphorical sense, to\ndenote a life which we no longer comprehend, seeing that Nihil or\nnothingness is the one thing whose existence is utterly impossible and\nwhose non-existence is absolutely certain.\n\nAs for immortality, here again there is ambiguity, for, as\nannihilation cannot exist, immortality is inevitable; and the only\nquestion that remains to be solved is whether this immortality will\nor will not be accompanied by some sort of continuance of our present\nconsciousness.\n\nBut, while it is probable that the problem of immortality, more or\nless accompanied by consciousness, will long remain in suspense,\nthe answer to the problem of the \u201cnervous headache,\u201d or rather of\ncongenital hemiphlegia, is doubtless easier to find. In any case,\nit occupies a domain which our direct investigations are able to\nexplore. It is, after all, an historical and geographical question.\nIt seems that there are in fact in the human brain an eastern lobe\nand a western lobe, which have never acted at the same time. The one\nproduces, here, reason, science and consciousness; the other secretes,\nyonder, intuition, religion and subconsciousness. One reflects only\nthe infinite and the unknowable; the other is interested only in\nwhat it is able to delimit, in what it may hope to understand. They\nrepresent, employing a perhaps imaginary image, the conflict between\nthe material and the moral ideal of humanity. They have more than\nonce endeavoured to penetrate each other, to mingle and to work in\nconcert; but the western lobe, at least over the most active part of\nthe world, has hitherto paralysed and almost annihilated the efforts of\nthe other. We are indebted to it for extraordinary progress in all the\nmaterial sciences, but also for such catastrophes as those which we are\nundergoing to-day, catastrophes which, if we are not careful, will not\nbe the last nor the worst. The time would seem to have come to awaken\nthe paralysed lobe; but we have neglected it so greatly that we no\nlonger quite know what it is capable of doing.\n\n\n\n\nHOPE AND DESPAIR\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nHOPE AND DESPAIR\n\n\n1\n\nThe same soldier, who has become my war-time \u201cgod-child,\u201d writes to me\nagain:\n\n  \u201cI experience an ineffable delight in remaining the average man and\n  in professing emptiness. I felt a great peace descend within me on\n  the day when I resigned myself to the common lot, in other words,\n  to ignorance and death. I have found life by renouncing it and, now\n  that I am no longer anything, I feel rich indeed. Do not tempt me in\n  the direction of that subtle spiritual vanity which constitutes one\n  of the most formidable obstacles to the final liberation from self.\n  Proud I certainly was and I am still only too much so; but we cannot\n  extract virtues otherwise than from our vices. More ardently than\n  when I embraced the phantom of individual superiority, I stretch\n  my arms towards homogeneous equality, towards the fullness of\n  vacancy....\u201d\n\n\n2\n\nHe is right; but he is thinking, here, with the eastern lobe of his\nbrain, the Asiatic lobe; and the philosophy of this lobe counsels only\ninaction and renunciation, the \u201cenchantment of the disenchanted,\u201d as\nRenan used to say, or rather the satisfaction of despair. Certainly all\nwe that see, all that we feel and all that we know pledges us to this\ndespair, which our meditations--above all, those of this same Asiatic\nlobe--may, for that matter, render very spacious and as beautiful,\nalmost as habitable, as hope. But what do we know, as compared with\nwhat we do not know? We are ignorant of all that goes before and of all\nthat comes after us, in a word, of the whole universe. Our despair,\nwhich appears at first the last word and the last effort of wisdom, is\ntherefore based upon what we know, which is nothing, whereas the hope\nof those whom we believe to be less wise can be based upon what we do\nnot know, which is everything.\n\nMoreover, if we would be quite just, there is more than one reason for\nhoping which we will not recall here; let us confess therefore that in\nthis nothing which we know there exists naught but despair and that\nhope can lie only in that everything which we do not know. But, instead\nof listening only to our eastern lobe, which counsels us to accept\nthis inactive ignorance and to bury our lives therein, is it not more\nreasonable at the same time to set our western lobe to work, the lobe\nwhich seeks to discover that everything? It is possible that here too,\nwhen all is said, it will find despair; but it is unlikely, for we\ncannot imagine a world which would be merely an act of despair. Now,\nif the world is not an act of despair, nothing that exists in it has\nreason to despair. In any case and in the meanwhile, this search will\ndoubtless permit us to hope as long as the world exists.\n\n\n3\n\nOne of the most dangerous temptations that assail him who scrutinizes\nnature and who sees, as he advances in his enquiries, that her\nmysteries become more and more numerous, reaching forth unendingly\nin every direction, is the temptation to grow discouraged by the\nimpossible task and to abandon it. He drops his weapons. On the last\nslope of life particularly, he is too much inclined to resign himself,\nto go no farther forward, to make no further effort, to fall into a\nhumour of saying, \u201cWhat is the good?\u201d and to drop asleep and learn\nnothing more, since he has learnt that he will never know anything.\n\nHe is already sensible of this wish to surrender at discretion when he\nconsiders the humblest, the lowliest of the sciences. What will it be\nwhen he attempts to embrace them all? The mind goes astray, becomes\ndizzy, asks to close its eyes. It must not close them. That would be\nthe basest treachery that man could commit. We have no other thing to\ndo in this life of ours than to seek to know where we are. We find no\nother reason for our existence; we have no other duty. Not to know\nis merely vexatious; no longer to seek to know is the supreme, the\nirremediable misfortune, the unpardonable desertion.\n\n\n4\n\nYet, without renouncing, it is not well that we should feed ourselves\nupon too petty illusions. We should always keep before our eyes certain\nverities which put us in our place. There is no doubt that we shall\nnever know everything; and so long as we do not know everything we\nshall be just as though we knew nothing. It is extremely possible, as\nthe Rig-Veda suggests, that God Himself, or the first cause, does not\nknow everything. It is equally possible that the universe has not yet,\nin any of its parts, become conscious of itself; that it knows not\nwhence it came nor whither it is going, what it was nor what it will\nbe, what it has accomplished nor what it is seeking to accomplish;\nand, on the other hand, it is probable that, if it has not yet learnt\nthese things, it will never learn them, seeing that, as I have already\nsaid, there is no reason why it should be able, in the infinity of time\nwhich will come after us, to do what it has not been able to do in the\ninfinity of time which went before.\n\n\n5\n\nIf there be a consciousness of the universe, a God, He knows all that\nHe should know, or He will never know it. And, if He knows it, why has\nHe done what He has done, which cannot lead to anything, seeing that He\nmight already have led us where we ought to go? Why did He not prefer\nnothingness, or at least that which we call nothingness, the only form\nof lasting happiness, immovable, incontestable and comprehensible?\n\nWe could understand, if need were, an immobile, immutable, eternal\nuniverse, a finished universe; but we cannot understand a universe\nin movement, or one, at least, of which all the parts that we see are\nincessantly in movement, evolving through space and time, a universe\nhurling itself at a dizzy rate of speed towards an end which it will\nnever attain, since it has not yet attained it.\n\nWe may say, to console ourselves, that all despair comes only from the\nlimited nature of our purview; but it is fair to add that our purview\nlimits all hope in the same way.\n\n\n\n\nMACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nMACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM\n\n\n1\n\nThe biologists tell us that the human embryo repeats, very rapidly\nduring the early months of its development and more slowly during the\nlater months, all the forms of life which preceded man upon this earth.\n\nThe round speck which is the germ becomes a hollow sphere, a sort\nof sac with a double wall, which is known as the gastrula and whose\norifice of invagination, when it closes, receives the name of the\nblastopore. This is protozoic life, the as yet gelatinous beginning of\nanimal life, and is followed, after transformations that would take too\nlong to enumerate, by polypoid life.\n\nNext, on either side of the head, appear the branchial arches,\ncorresponding with the gills of the fish. At the end of the first\nmonth, the limbs are still no more than mere buds; on the other hand,\nthe embryo is provided with a tail, which, folded against the body,\nnearly touches the forehead. It now has the appearance of a tadpole\nand lives a life which is wholly aquatic, bathed in the amniotic fluid\nwhich represents for it the water in which the embryos of fish and\nfrogs move about freely.\n\nIt now becomes a matter of forming a resolution and knowing what to do\nwith it. The embryo is almost in the situation occupied by life at the\norigin of the species; and nature, as though to humiliate man or to\nhumiliate herself by remembering her mistakes and hesitations, returns\nto her gropings, her asymmetrics, her repentances, her unsuccessful\nexperiments. Tentative forms, such as the dorsal cord, are reabsorbed;\nthe primitive kidneys disappear, to make room for the final kidneys,\nwhich are enormous, filling the greater portion of the peritoneal\ncavity. Enormous too is the liver, which invades almost the whole of\nthe visceral cavity; enormous the head, almost as large as the rest\nof the body; and in this enormous head the primitive ocular vesicles\nare formed, themselves enormous, as is the umbilical vesicle. This is\nthe incoherent and monstrous period corresponding with the period of\nmadness and gigantism when nature, as yet inexperienced, was blindly\nsketching uncertain creatures, formidable, unbalanced and anomalous,\nbirds, crocodiles, elephants and fish in one, as though she had not\nas yet decided what to do, not yet completed her classifications,\ndisentangled her laws, or acquired the sense of proportion, of balance,\nor of conditions essential to the maintenance of the life which she was\ncreating.\n\n\n2\n\nThis, roughly speaking, is the recapitulation which occurs before\nour eyes, but of which, no doubt, many incidents escape us or do not\nsufficiently attract our attention, for it is possible that they\nreproduce types with which we are not acquainted and which have not\neven left geological traces, seeing that the number of species which\nhave disappeared is infinitely greater than that of the species which\nwe know.\n\nDr. H\u00e9lan Jaworski may therefore very justly assert that the embryonic\nperiod corresponds with the geological period. And, even as, in the\ngreat terrestrial evolution, we observe the gradual disappearance of\nthe armour-plated fishes, the monstrous reptiles and the gigantic\nmammals, so, in the minor embryonic evolution, we see the primitive\nkidney, the dorsal cord and the umbilical vesicle dissolve, while the\nliver diminishes and the disproportion between the head and the rest of\nthe body is lessened. In a word, nature is learning wisdom, recognizing\nher errors, profiting by her experience, doing her best to repair her\nblunders and acquiring a sense of equilibrium, economy and form.\n\nDr. Jaworski finds other analogies between the geological period\ncorresponding with man\u2019s appearance upon earth and the birth of the\nchild, analogies which are ingenious, but rather more hazardous. Birth\nis in fact preceded by a miniature deluge, caused by the tearing of\nthe foetal envelopes, which allow the amniotic fluid to escape. Then\nthe child, at the moment of entering into life, suddenly experiences a\nsort of glacial period; it passes, in fact, from an environment with\na temperature of over 98\u00b0 to the outer air, which is barely 60\u00b0 or\n65\u00b0. The sense of cold is so terrible that it wrests a first cry of\nsuffering from the new-born child.\n\n\n3\n\nWhat is the meaning of this strange recapitulation?\n\nDr. Jaworski thinks that, if the brief process of embryonic evolution\nwhich prepares the way for the birth of man repeats the great process\nof terrestrial evolution, this latter, on its side, might well be but\na vast embryonic period that is preparing for a birth which we cannot\nas yet imagine. I do not know whether he will succeed in maintaining\nthis stupendous theory. If he does, he will really have made us, as he\npromises to do, \u201ctake a step towards the essence of things.\u201d Meanwhile,\nthanks to his preparatory studies, he will always have made us take\nanother and a very useful step towards a truth which this time is\nincontestable, which, though less unexpected, has never been elucidated\nwith so much patience and which is no less big with consequences.\n\n\n4\n\nDr. Jaworski, then, undertakes to demonstrate that the human body\nunites in itself, in a plainly recognizable form, all the living\ncreatures which now exist upon earth and which have existed since\nthe origin of life. In other words, each creature sums up in itself\nall those which have preceded it; and man, the last-comer, contains\nwithin himself the whole biological tree, so much so that, if we could\ndistribute his body, if we could segregate each of his organs and keep\nit alive in isolation, we should be able to reconstitute all existing\nforms, to repeople the earth with all the species which it has borne,\nfrom the primitive protoplasm to the synthesis, the final achievement,\nwhich is man.\n\nWe might perhaps go farther than Dr. Jaworski and declare, with the\noccultists of the east, that we likewise contain within us, in the germ\nor in a rough-hewn state, all the creatures and all the forms that will\ncome after us. But here we should be leaving the domain of science\nproper to lose ourselves in a speculation which by its very nature is\nincapable of verification.\n\n\n5\n\nSo it is not merely in a figurative sense, such as that foreshadowed by\nthe current idiom, where it speaks of the vascular tree, the branches\nof nerves, or the ovarian cluster; it is not merely by analogy, but in\na literal and strictly scientific sense that our heart, fundamentally,\nis nothing but a medusa and our kidneys sponges, that our intestines\nrepresent the polyps and our skeleton the polypites, that our\nreproductive organs are worms or molluscs, that the vertebral column\nand the spinal marrow take the place of the Echinodermata, while the\nBrachiopoda and the Ctenophora would be derived from our eye and the\nreptiles found in our digestive apparatus, the birds in our respiratory\norgans and so on.\n\nI repeat, there is no question here of metaphors or of more or less\napproximate, elastic and plausible correspondences but of rigorously\nand meticulously established proofs.\n\nI cannot, of course, set before you the details of Dr. Jaworski\u2019s\nexegesis. It would not permit of the slightest solution of continuity\nand, in the three volumes published so far, it leads us to conclusions\nwhich are very difficult to contest. People used to assert, without\nattaching too much faith to what they said or scrutinizing it too\nclosely, that man is a microcosm. It seems to be clearly proved to-day\nthat this is not merely literally defensible, but scientifically\naccurate. We are a prehistoric colony, immense and innumerous, a living\nagglomeration of all that lives, has lived and probably will live upon\nearth. We are not only the sons or brothers of the worms, the reptiles,\nthe fish, the frogs, the birds, the mammals and no matter what monsters\nhave defiled or affrighted the surface of the globe: we bear them\nwithin us; our organs are no other than themselves; we nourish all\ntheir types; they are only awaiting an opportunity to escape from us,\nto reappear, to reconstitute themselves, to develop and to plunge us\nonce again into terror. In this respect, quite as much as in respect\nof the secret thoughts, the vices and the phantoms with which we are\nfilled, we might repeat the words which Emerson\u2019s old man used to speak\nto his children, when they were frightened by a strange face in the\ndark passage:\n\n\u201cChildren, you will never see anything worse than yourselves!\u201d\n\nIf all the species were to disappear and only man remained, none\nwould be lost and all might be reborn of his body, as though they were\ncoming out of Noah\u2019s ark, from the almost invisible protozoa down to\nthe formidable antediluvian colossi which could lick the roofs of our\nhouses.\n\nIt is therefore fairly probable that all these species take part in\nour existence, in, our instincts, in all our feelings, in all our\nthoughts; and here once more we are led back to the great religions of\nIndia, which foresaw all the truths that we are gradually discovering\nand which already, thousands of years ago, were telling us that man\nis everything and that he must recognize his essence in every living\ncreature.\n\n\n\n\nHEREDITY AND PREEXISTENCE\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nHEREDITY AND PREEXISTENCE\n\n\n1\n\nThe law of heredity which insists that the descendants shall suffer\nby the faults and profit by the virtues of their ancestors comprises\ntruths that are no longer disputed. They shine forth, visible to the\neyes of all. The child of a drunkard will bear the burden of his\nfather\u2019s vice all his life long, from the day of his birth to that of\nhis death, in body and in mind. One might say that by this irrefutable\nexample nature had intended ostentatiously to affirm and manifest\nthe implacable character of her law, as though to make us understand\nthat she takes no account whatever of our conceptions of justice and\ninjustice and that she acts on an unvarying principle in all the\nobscure circumstances in which we cannot follow the inextricable\nwindings of her will. This example, if we had no other, would be enough\nto brand that inhuman will with infamy. There is no law more repugnant\nto our reason, to our sense of responsibility, nor one which does a\ndeeper injury to our trust in the universe and the unknown spirit\nthat rules it. Of all life\u2019s injustices, this is the most glaring and\nthe least comprehensible. For most of the others we find excuses or\nexplanations; but, when we remember that a new-born child, a child\nwhich did not ask to be born, is, from the moment of inhaling its first\nbreath of air, smitten with irremediable insolvency, with a ferocious,\nirrevocable sentence and with evils which it will drag to the grave, it\nseems to us that not one of the most hateful tyrants that history has\ncursed would have dared to do what nature does quietly every day.\n\nBut do we really bear the burden of the errors of the dead? In the\nfirst place, is it quite certain that the dead are really dead and no\nlonger dwell within us? It is a fact that we continue them, that we\nare the durable part of what they were. We cannot deny that we are\nstill subject to their influence, that we reproduce their features and\ntheir characters, that we represent them almost entirely, that they\ncontinue to live and to act in us; it is therefore very natural that\nthey also should continue to bear the consequences of an action or a\nway of living which their departure has not interrupted.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d you may say, \u201cI had no part in this action, this habit, this\nvice for which I am paying to-day. I was not consulted; I had no\nopportunity of uttering a protest, of checking my father, or my\ngrandfather, as he went to his ruin down the fatal precipice. I was not\nborn; I did not yet exist!\u201d\n\nHow do you know? May there not be a fundamental mistake in the idea\nof heredity as we conceive it? At one end of the beam of those scales\nwhich we accuse of injustice hangs heredity, but the other is borne\ndown by something different, which we have never taken into account,\nfor it has not yet a name, something which is the antithesis of\nheredity, which cleaves into the future instead of emerging from the\npast and which we might call preexistence or prenatality.\n\nEven as our dead still live in us, so we have already lived in them.\nThere is no reason to believe that the future, which is full of life,\nis less active and less potent than the past, which is full of the\ndead. Instead of descending, should we not rather ascend the course of\nthe years to discover the source of our actions?\n\nWe know not in what fashion those already dwell in us who shall be\nborn of us, down to the last generation; but that they do dwell in us\nis certain. Whatever the number of our descendants, in the sequence of\nthe ages, whatever the transformations which the elements, climates,\ncountries and centuries may cause them to undergo, they will keep\nintact, through all vicissitudes, the principle of life which they have\nderived from us. They have not obtained it elsewhere or they could not\nbe what they are. They have really issued from us; and, if they have\nissued from us, it is because they were in us from the first. What were\nthey doing within us, all these innumerable, accumulated lives? Is it\npermissible to suppose that they were absolutely inactive? Then what\nwere their functions, what their power? What divided them from us? When\ndid we begin, where did they end? At what point did their thoughts and\ntheir desires mingle with ours?\n\n\u201cHow could they think and act in us,\u201d you ask, \u201chaving as yet no brain?\u201d\n\nTrue; but they had ours. The dead too are without a brain; nevertheless\nno one will deny that they continue to think and act in us. This brain\nof which we are so proud is not the source but the condenser of thought\nand will. Like the Leyden jar or the Ruhmkorff coil, it exists, it is\nanimated only so long as the electric fluid of life passes through it\nor resides in it. It does not produce this fluid, it collects it;\nwhat matters is not its convolutions, which may be compared with the\nwindings of an induction-coil, but the life that flows through it; and\nwhat can this life be, if it be not the sum of all the existences which\nare accumulated within us, which are not extinguished at our death,\nwhich begin before our birth and which continue us, forwards, and\nbackwards, into the infinity of time?\n\n\n2\n\nWriters of essays and novels have at times endeavoured to represent\nthese diverse lives which we harbour within us; and each of us, if he\nquestion himself sincerely and profoundly, will discover in himself\ntwo or three clearly-defined types, which have nothing in common but\nthe body in which they reside, which rarely agree among themselves,\nwhich are incessantly striving to gain the upper hand and which put up\nwith one another as best they can, in order to go through an existence\nwhose aggregate forms our ego. This ego will be good or bad, remarkable\nor insignificant, more or less generous or selfish, calm or uneasy,\npacific or pugnacious, heroic or pusillanimous, hesitating or decided\nand enterprising, brutal or refined, crafty or loyal, active or idle,\nchaste or lascivious, modest or vainglorious, proud or obsequious,\nunreliable or steadfast, according to the authority which the type\nthat captures the best positions of the heart or brain is able to\nassume over the others. But, even in the life that appears the most\nstable, the most homogeneous, the best-balanced, this authority will\nnever be final or undisputed. The dominant type will find itself for\never disputed, attacked, thwarted, disturbed, circumvented, harassed,\ntempted, deceived, betrayed and sometimes cunningly dethroned by one\nof the rival or subordinate types which it failed to distrust or which\nit did not watch narrowly enough. We behold unexpected coalitions,\nfantastic compromises, regrettable defections, fierce competitions,\nincessant intrigues and positive revolutions, especially at the\ncritical periods and at each moment of important happenings; and all\nthis prodigious inward tragedy does not cease for an instant until the\nhour of death.\n\n\n3\n\nBut, once again, why seek only in the past and among our ancestors for\nthe actors in this drama which is the essential drama of humanity? What\njustification have we for supposing that the dead alone play all the\nparts? Why should those from whom we have issued possess more influence\nthan those who will issue from us? The first are remote from our bodily\nselves, they are separated from us by unfathomable mysteries and their\nsurvival may perhaps be called in question; the others inhabit our\nflesh and their existence is incontestable. We have just seen that the\nargument deduced from the absence of any brain is not invincible.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d you will perhaps go on to say, \u201chow do you suppose that, when\nthey have not yet lived, they can possess habits, virtues and vices,\npreferences and experience, in a word, all that constitutes a character\nand cannot be acquired save by contact with life?\u201d\n\nBut the same objection could be raised, in most cases, with regard\nto our ancestors. Generally speaking, when we issued from them, they\nwere still young; they were not yet what they became and what we shall\nbecome after them. They had not yet adopted the habits, the ways of\nthinking or feeling, or cultivated the virtues or the vices which are\nreproduced in us. The stubborn little mediocrity whom we all feel\nwithin us, frugal, cautious and shabby in his dealings, was still\nperhaps a prodigal, high-spirited and reckless youth; the rake was\nstill perhaps chaste, the thief had never stolen and the murderer may\nhave had a horror of bloodshed. All this is almost equally immaterial\nand equally potential in both cases; the only present points at issue\nare the amorphous tendencies and forces whereon the brain which we\nreceive from these and pass on to those bestows a form.\n\nIt is therefore very possible that the little mediocrity, the rake,\nthe thief or the murderer, far from being dead, are not yet born and\nare taking as active a part as our ancestors in the agitations and\nsometimes in the conduct of our existence. This is what the most\nancient and the most venerable religions of humanity always foresaw\nor revealed, receiving it perhaps on the authority of an unknown and\nloftier source; and of these religions Christianity, with its dogma\nof original sin, is but an imperfect echo. Even to-day, more than six\nhundred millions of human beings believe in the preexistence of the\nsoul, in successive lives and in reincarnation. In the eyes of these\nreligions, the little mediocrity who begot us several centuries ago\nis the same who, a little less paltry, a little less narrow, improved\nby his previous life and his passage through the mysteries of death,\nis awaiting within us the moment of rebirth and who, while waiting,\nshares our instincts, our feelings and our thoughts. He does not\nwait in solitude; he is but one life in the host of lives which have\npreceded us and which come back to live in us again; and all these past\nand future lives form the sum total of our own.\n\n\n4\n\nWe will not here discuss this doctrine of successive lives and of the\nexpiatory and purifying reincarnation, which is the noblest and, up\nto now, the only acceptable explanation of nature\u2019s injustices that\nhas been discovered. In the present state of our knowledge, it can be\nonly a magnificent theory or a statement impossible of proof. Let us\nnot forsake the indisputable ground on which heredity and preexistence\nhave their being. Heredity is an acquired fact, an experimental truth;\npreexistence is a logical necessity. It is not indeed possible to\nconceive that what will be born of us does not already exist within us\nin fact, in principle, in the germ, in essence or in potentiality;\nand, from the moment of its existence in a fashion probably more\nspiritual than material, it is far less surprising that it should be\nmore or less responsible for thoughts and actions to which it could not\nbe wholly a stranger.\n\nIn any case, heredity, which is incontestable, and preexistence,\nwhich is necessary, remind us yet once again that each of us is not a\nsingle being, isolated, permanent, hermetically sealed, independent of\nothers and separated from all things in time and space, but a porous\nvase dipping into the infinite; a sort of cross-roads, where all the\npaths of the past, the present and the future meet; an inn beside the\neternal highways, where all the lives which make up our own foregather\nfor a few days\u2019 sojourn. We believe ourselves dead when they leave the\ninn; and we fancy that they too have perished. It is more likely that\nthis is not so at all. They are merely quitting the ruined hostel to\ninstall themselves in a new and more habitable house. They carry with\nthem their debts and their obligations; they remove to their new abode\ntheir instincts, their habits, their ideals, their passions also, their\nmerits and their faults, their acquisitions and their memories. The\nhouse is different, but the guests are the same; and the old life will\nresume its course in the new dwelling and will be perhaps a little\nnobler, perhaps a little fairer, perhaps filled with a little brighter\nlight.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREAT REVELATION\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\nTHE GREAT REVELATION\n\n\n1\n\nWe despair of ever knowing the origin of the universe, its aim, its\nlaws, or its intentions; and we end by doubting whether there be any.\nIt were wiser very humbly to confess that we are not able to conceive\nthem. It is probable that, if the universe to-morrow were to yield us\nthe key of its riddle, we should be as incapable of understanding how\nto use it as is a dog to whom we show the key of a clock. In revealing\nits great secret to us, it would teach us hardly anything; or at least\nthe revelation would have but an insignificant influence upon our\nlife, our happiness, our ethics, our efforts, and our hopes. It would\nsoar at such heights that no one would perceive it; at most it would\ndisencumber the sky of our religious illusions, leaving only the\ninfinite void of the ether in their place.\n\n\n2\n\nFor that matter, there is no saying but that we once possessed this\nrevelation. It is highly possible that the religions of nations which\nhave disappeared, such as the Lemurians, the Atlanteans and many\nothers, were aware of it and that we have discovered its remains in the\nesoteric traditions that have come down to us. It must not indeed be\nforgotten that there exists, side by side with the outward, scientific\nhistory, a secret history of mankind which derives its substance\nof legends, myths, hieroglyphics, strange monuments and mysterious\nwritings from the hidden meaning of the primitive books. One thing\nis certain, that, though the imagination of those who interpret this\noccult history is often venturesome, all that they declare is not to be\ndespised and deserves to be examined more seriously one day than has\nhitherto been done.\n\nThe essence of this esoteric revelation is very well summed up by M.\nMarc Saunier, a disciple of Fabre d\u2019Olivet and Saint-Yves d\u2019Alveydre,\nin his book, _La L\u00e9gende des symboles_.\n\n  \u201cThe Initiates,\u201d he says, \u201chave always regarded each continent as\n  a being subject to the same laws as man. For them, the minerals\n  constitute its skeleton, the flora its flesh, the fauna its\n  nerve-cells and the human races the grey matter of its brain. This\n  continent itself is but an organ of the earth, wherein each man is\n  treated as a thinking cell and whereof the thought is represented by\n  the sum of human thoughts. The earth itself is but an organ of the\n  solar system, which in turn is considered as an individual; and our\n  solar system thus becomes merely an organ of another being of the\n  infinite, whose heart would appear in the star Alpha in Aries. And\n  lastly, by a final synthesis, we come to the Cosmos, which expresses\n  the general sum of all things, in a being whose body is the world\n  and whose thought is the universal intelligence, exalted by the\n  religions to the rank of a deity.\u201d\n\nThe basis of their doctrine is plainly evolutionistic. Each continent\nhas merely transformed, in its own time and according to its own ideal,\nthe seeds which came from the Hyperborean tracts; and man is but the\nresult of an animal evolution. For the rest, they borrow it in part\nfrom the Hindus, thus anticipating by many thousands of years the\nlatest hypotheses of our modern science.\n\n\n3\n\nBut, without loitering in these shifting sands, let us go direct to\nclear and reliable sources. We possess, in the sacred and secret books\nof India, of which we know only an infinitesimal part, a cosmogony\nwhich no European conception has ever surpassed. It would not be\ncorrect to say that it attained, at the first endeavour, the ultimate\nlimits beyond which the mind of man could not venture without\ndissolving in the infinite, for it was the work of centuries of which\nwe do not know the tale; but it indisputably preceded all the others,\nits birth was earlier than anything that we know and, at the beginning\nof all things, it exceeded in grandeur all that we have learnt and all\nthat we can imagine.\n\nIt was the first, for instance, long before our historic periods, to\ngive us a dizzy yet concrete idea of the infinity of time. The Book of\nManu teaches us that twelve thousand years of mortals are but a day and\na night to the gods; their year, therefore, consisting of three hundred\nand sixty days, numbers 4,320,000 years. A thousand years of the gods\nmake but one of Brahma\u2019s days, that is to say, 4,320,000,000 human\nyears, representing the total life of our globe; and Brahma\u2019s night is\nof equal duration. Three hundred and sixty of these days and nights\nmake one of this god\u2019s years; and a hundred of these years constitute\none of his lives, that is to say, the duration of the universe, which\nis represented by the formidable figure of 311,090,000,000,000\nyears. After this he begins a new life. At present we have not yet\nattained the noon of Brahma\u2019s actual day nor half the life-time of our\nterrestrial globe.\n\nTo complete this outline of the stupendous chronology of the Vedas,\nI continue to profit by some notes received from my war-time godson,\nwho has a thorough knowledge of this unduly neglected science. For\nthe rest, it will be seen that chronology and cosmogony are here in\nintimate connection:\n\n  \u201cThe day of Brahma (4,320,000,000 years) is divided into fourteen\n  lives of Manu, consisting alternately of seven Manvantaras and seven\n  Pralayas. The word Manvantara signifies the interval between two\n  Manus: one of these appears in the dawn and the other in the twilight\n  of this period of terrestrial activity. The morning Manu gives the\n  Manvantara its name and the evening Manu presides over the Pralaya,\n  that is to say, the period of dissolution, or negative _status quo_,\n  death, sleep, or inertia, as the case may be, which divides two waves\n  of life.\n\n  \u201cUniversal evolution is a chain without beginning or end, each\n  link of which in turn appears and disappears in our field of\n  consciousness. Brahma himself dies only to be reborn. But for the\n  sovereign of the worlds, as for a random star or the least of\n  organized creatures, there is death and dissolution only from the\n  individual point of view. Darkness is the ransom to be paid for\n  light, the evening balances the morning, age is the price of youth\n  and death the reverse of life. In reality, however, all evolution is\n  at the same time continuous and discontinuous; the Manvantaras and\n  Pralayas are at once simultaneous and successive; each individual\n  life is engendered by its elemental double and engenders its residual\n  double. Every decline of life in a given place coincides with an\n  increase of being in a corresponding place and proceeds by means of\n  a rebirth in a fresh place. Fundamentally, there is no individual\n  life. We are at once ourselves and another, ourselves and several\n  others, ourselves and all others, ourselves and the Universe,\n  ourselves and infinity.\n\n  \u201cThe evolution of our terrestrial globe is an infinitesimal cycle of\n  this universal evolution, corresponding merely with a day and a night\n  of Brahma, and is divided into fourteen cycles, each consisting of\n  a Manvantara and a Pralaya. The cycle of organic evolution upon our\n  solidified globe represents only one of these subdivisions, that is\n  to say, the radius of the organic sphere is only a fourteenth part\n  of the radius of the mineral sphere. Mineral evolution is manifestly\n  continuous from the formation of the globe to its dissolution. If,\n  between the periods of geological activity, there exists a Pralaya\n  of any kind, this latter, despite the etymology of the word, must\n  be not a dissolution, which would be perfectly inconceivable from\n  the logical and scientific point of view, but a period of inertia\n  or abatement, of which the hypothesis is readily admissible\n  and of which the glacial periods, occurring in the very course\n  of the present Manvantara, afford us an example. In the earlier\n  cycles of Manu, the earth passed in succession through the various\n  stages of condensation which science regards as igneous and which\n  correspond with the ethereal, gaseous and liquid evolution of the\n  elements. During these long periods, the life of the present existed\n  potentially in the soul of the earth and actually on other globes\n  than ours.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\nBut we will proceed no further with this outline, which would become\nso complicated as to be inextricable. Let us remember simply the\nmagnificent doctrine of the reincarnation, which is the most ancient\nreply, the only decisive and, no doubt, the most plausible reply, to\nall the problems of justice and injustice, the immortal torture of\nmortals, and its corollary, the law of Karma, which, as my godson\nso truly says, \u201cis the most wonderful of ethical discoveries: it\nrepresents abstract liberty and is enough to enfranchise the human\nwill from any superior or even infinite being. We are our own creators\nand the sole captains of our fate; no other than ourselves rewards\nor punishes us; there is no sin, but only consequences; there is no\nmorality, but only responsibilities. Now Buddha taught that, merely by\nvirtue of this sovran law, the individual must be reborn to reap what\nhe has sowed; and this certainty of rebirth was enough to neutralize\nthe horror of death.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIs all this nothing more than imagination, than the dreams of brains\nmore ardent than our own, the hallucinations of ascetics which amaze\nthe young and the immobility or the echo of immemorial traditions\nbequeathed by other races, or by races anterior to man and more\nspiritual? It is impossible to decide; but, whatever its origin, it is\ncertain that the monument whereof we have seen but a corner of the\npedestal is prodigious and that it has not a human aspect. All that we\ncan say is that our modern sciences, notably arch\u00e6ology, geology and\nbiology, confirm rather than invalidate either of these revelations.\n\n\n5\n\nBut this is not the question for the moment. Let us suppose that one\nof these revelations, for instance, that of the sacred books of India,\nwere true, incontestable and scientifically proved by our researches;\nor that an interplanetary communication or a declaration of some\nsuperhuman being no longer permitted us to doubt its authenticity: what\ninfluence would such a revelation have upon our life? What would it\ntransform in our life, what novel element would it add to our morality\nor our happiness? No doubt it would work but a very slight change. It\nwould pass too high above us; it would not descend to our level; it\nwould not touch us; we should lose ourselves in its immensity; and upon\nthe whole, knowing everything, we should be neither happier nor wiser\nthan when we knew nothing.\n\nNot to know what he has come upon this earth to do: that is man\u2019s great\nand everlasting torment. Now we must perforce admit that the actual\ntruth of the universe, if some day we learn it, will probably be very\nsimilar to one or other of those revelations which, while appearing to\nteach us everything, teach us nothing at all. It will at least possess\nthe same inhuman character. It will necessarily be as unlimited in both\nspace and time, as abysmal, as foreign to our senses and our brain.\nThe more tremendous, the more majestic the revelation, the greater\nchance will it have of being true; but also, the more remote from us\nit is, the less will it interest us. We can hardly hope to escape\nfrom this discouraging dilemma: those revelations, explanations or\ninterpretations which are too petty will not satisfy us, because we\nshall instinctively feel them to be insufficient; while those which are\ntoo great will pass us by too far to affect us.\n\n\n6\n\nIt nevertheless seems desirable that this revelation of the sacred\nbooks of India should be authentic and that our knowledge, still so\nslight, so unimportant, so timid and so incoherent, should gradually\nconfirm, as indeed it unwittingly does daily, certain points scattered\nthrough the boundless immensity of this immemorial truth.\n\nIt would in any case, even if it did not succeed in affecting us\ndirectly, possess the advantage of enlarging our horizon, which is\nnarrower than we suppose, until it embraces infinity; of studding\nthis infinity with magnificent landmarks; of animating it, peopling\nit, filling it with wonderful faces, making it a living, perceptible,\nalmost comprehensible thing.\n\nWe all know that we dwell in infinity; but this infinity is, for us,\nonly a bare and barren word, a black and uninhabitable void, a formless\nabstraction, a lifeless expression, to which our imagination can\ngive only a momentary vitality, at the cost of a tiring, solitary,\nunskilful, unassisted, ungrateful and unfruitful effort. We hold\nourselves, in fact, pent in this terrestrial world of ours and in our\nbrief historic ages; and at the most we raise our eyes, from time to\ntime, towards the other planets of our solar system and project our\nthoughts, which are discouraged from the beginning, as far as the\nnebulous periods that preceded man\u2019s advent on our globe. More and more\ndeliberately we are directing the whole activity of our intelligence\nupon ourselves; and, by a regrettable optical illusion, the more it\nrestricts its field of action, the deeper we believe it to be probing.\nOur thinkers and philosophers, fearing lest they should stray as their\npredecessors did before them, no longer concern themselves with any\nbut the least disputable aspects, problems and secrets; but, if these\nare the least disputable, they are also the least sublime; and man, in\nhis quality as a terrestrial animal, becomes the sole object of their\ninvestigations. The scientists, on the other hand, are accumulating\nminor data and observations whose weight is stifling them; yet they no\nlonger dare to thrust them aside or open them out, so as to ventilate\nthem by some general law, some salutary hypothesis, for those which\nthey have hitherto ventured to advance have been pitiably contradicted,\none after the other, and scouted by experience.\n\nNevertheless, they are right to act as they do and to continue their\ninvestigations according to their narrow and restricted methods; but\nwe are entitled to observe that, the closer they believe that they\nhave drawn to a fugitive truth, the greater are their uncertainty and\nconfusion, the more precarious, imaginary and insufficient seem the\nfoundations upon which they based their confidence and the more fully\ndo they perceive the immense distance that still divides them from the\nleast of life\u2019s secrets. As one of the most illustrious of them, Sir\nWilliam Grove, prophetically remarked:\n\n  \u201cThe day is fast approaching when it will be confessed that the\n  Forces we know are but the phenomenal manifestations of Realities we\n  know nothing about, but which were known to the Ancients and by them\n  worshipped.\u201d\n\n\n7\n\nThis, indeed, is what we are bound to think if we study slightly this\nprimitive revelation, this ancient wisdom and what has grown out of it.\nMan once knew more than he now knows. He was ignorant perhaps of the\nenormous mass of petty details which we have observed and classified\nand which have enabled us to subdue certain forces which he never\nthought of turning to account: but it is probable that he understood\nbetter than we do their nature, their essence and their origin.\n\nThe higher civilization of humanity, which history traces back\ntentatively to five or six thousand years before Christ, is perhaps far\nmore ancient; and, without admitting, as has been asserted, that the\nEgyptians kept astronomical records through a period of six hundred and\nthirty thousand years, we may consider it as established that their\nobservations embraced two precessional cycles, two sidereal years, or\nfifty-one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-six solar years. Now they\nthemselves were not initiators but initiates, who derived all that they\nknew from a more ancient source. It was the same with the Semites,\nin the matter of their primitive books and their Kabbalah; and the\nGreeks, among whom all those who really taught us something about the\norigin and constitution of the world and its elements, about nature and\ndivinity, mind and matter, men such as Hesiod, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras,\nPlato and the Neo-Platonists, were likewise initiates, that is to say,\nthey were men who, having travelled in Egypt or India, had drunk of the\nsame one and immemorial spring. Our prehistoric religions, Scandinavian\nor Germanic and the Druidism of the Celts, those of China and Japan, of\nMexico and Peru, despite numerous deformations, were also derived from\nthe same source, even as our great western metaphysics, which preceded\nour modern materialism, with its somewhat sordid outlook, and notably\nthe metaphysics of Leibnitz, Kant, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel have\napproached it and, more or less unconsciously, slaked their thirst at\nit.\n\nIt is therefore certain that through the Greeks, through the Bible,\nthrough Christianity, which is its last echo, for the author of the\nApocalypse and St. Paul were initiates, we are all steeped in this\nrevelation; that there is not and never has been any other; that it\nis the great human or superhuman revelation; and that consequently\nit would be right and salutary to study it more attentively and more\nprofoundly than we have hitherto done.\n\n\n8\n\nWhere does the source of this revelation lie? We place it in the\neast because nearly everything that we know about it is found in\nthe sacred books of India. But it is almost certainly of western or\nrather Hyperborean origin and dates back to those wonderful vanished\nAtlanteans, whose last Protoscythian colonies flourished over eleven\nthousand years ago and whose existence can no longer be denied.\n\nRemember that famous passage in Plato:\n\n  \u201cOne day, when Solon was conversing with the priests of Sa\u00efs on the\n  history of the remote ages, one of them said:\n\n  \u201c\u2018O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children!... There is not\n  an opinion, not a tradition of knowledge among you that is old....\n  You know nothing of that noble race of heroes of whom you are a\n  remnant.... Nine thousand years, as our annals record, have elapsed\n  since what I am about to tell you.... The most famous of your actions\n  was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis, which lay over against\n  the Pillars of Hercules, was greater than Libya and Asia put together\n  and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean whereof\n  the Mediterranean Sea was but a harbour; and within the Pillars the\n  empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to\n  Egypt. This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt and Greece and\n  all the Mediterranean countries. Then your city did bravely and won\n  renown throughout the earth. For, risking her own existence, she\n  repelled the invader and gave liberty to all the nations within the\n  Pillars. Soon after, earthquakes arose and floods; and your warlike\n  race was swallowed up by the earth; and the island of Atlantis also\n  disappeared in the sea.\u2019\u201d\n\nThis page in the _Tim\u00e6us_ is the first glimpse that history properly\nso-called affords of the immense chaos of the antediluvian period.\nModern researches and discoveries have confirmed it step by step. To\nquote Roisel, who devoted a remarkable book to the Atlanteans, a work\nless well-known than those of Scott Elliott and Rudolf Steiner, but one\nthat does not admit of the slightest doubt:\n\n  \u201cIt is proved that, long before the historic ages, the Atlanticans\n  had acquired a marvellous science whose elements mankind is hardly\n  beginning to reconstitute and whose mighty relics are found in\n  ancient Gaul, Egypt, Persia, India and the central portion of the\n  American continent. More than ten thousand years before our era, they\n  knew the precession of the equinoxes, the slow changes which many\n  stars experience in their courses and the thousand secrets of nature.\n  They had processes of which modern industry has not yet fathomed the\n  mysteries.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\nThe outcome of these studies is that humanity never underwent a\ndisaster to be compared with the disappearance of Atlantis. It will\nperhaps need thousands of years to repair that loss and to reascend\nto the level of a civilization which had certainties of which we\nlaboriously glean the scattered remnants, regarding the origin and\nmovements of the universe, the energy of matter, the unknown forces\nof this and other worlds, the life beyond the grave and a social\norganization and political economy similar to those of the bees.\nNothing could better prove the uselessness of man\u2019s effort than this\nunparalleled loss, if we did not strive to hope in spite of all.\n\nA nation of wonderful metallurgists, who had discovered the means of\ntempering copper for which we are still seeking, a nation of fabulous\nengineers, whose geometry, as Professor Smyth tells us, began where\nEuclid\u2019s ends, they lifted and transported to enormous distances, by\nmysterious methods, rocks weighing fifteen hundred tons and strewed\nthe world with those fantastic moving stones known as \u201cmad stones\u201d\nand \u201cstones of truth,\u201d stones weighing five hundred tons and so\ningeniously poised on one of their corners that a child can move them\nwith its finger, whereas the united impetus of two hundred men would\nbe incapable of overturning them, stones which, from the geological\npoint of view, never belong to the spot where they are found. A nation\nof explorers who had traversed and colonized the whole surface of\nthe earth, a nation of scholars, mathematicians and astronomers,\nthey appear to have been above all things ruthless rationalists and\nlogicians, endowed with, so to speak, a metallic brain, the lateral\nlobes of which were much more highly developed than ours. They applied\ntheir incomparable faculties exclusively to the study of the exact\nsciences; and the sole object of their energies was the conquest of\ntruth. But the study of the invisible and the infinite, under their\npowerful scrutiny, itself becomes an exact science; and the main idea\nof their cosmogony, by virtue of which everything issues from the ocean\nof cosmic matter or from the boundless waves of the eternal ether, soon\nto return and to reemerge, disfigured and overladen with numberless\nmyths by the imagination of their degenerate descendants or settlers:\nthis main idea forms the base of every religion. It is improbable that\nman will ever discover one to equal it or replace it.\n\n\n10\n\nIt is in the sacred books of India that we find the surest and most\nplentiful traces of this cosmogony or of this revelation. Less than a\ncentury ago, men were almost wholly unaware of the existence of these\nsacred books. Their interpreters have taken two different paths. On\nthe one hand, scholars whom we may describe as official have supplied\ntranslations of a certain number of texts, which might also be called\nofficial, texts which they do not always understand and which their\nreaders understand even less. On the other hand, initiates, genuine\nor pretended, with the assistance of adepts of an occult fraternity,\nhave suggested a new and more impressive interpretation of these same\ntexts or of others still more secret. They still, rightly or wrongly,\ninspire a certain distrust. We are obliged to admit the authenticity\nand the antiquity of certain traditions, of certain primitive and\nessential writings, though it is impossible to assign an approximate\ndate to them, so completely are they merged in the mists of the\nprehistoric ages. But they are almost incomprehensible without keys and\ncommentaries; and it is here that our doubts and hesitations begin. A\nlarge number of those commentaries are likewise very ancient and in\ntheir turn need keys; others appear to be more recent; lastly, others\nseem to be contemporary; and it is often difficult to draw a dividing\nline between that which may well exist in the original and that which\nthe interpreters believe to exist in the original or which they more or\nless deliberately add to it. Now the most striking, the most impressive\nand in any case the most lucid part of the doctrine is often contained\nin the commentaries.\n\nNext, as I have observed, comes the question of the keys, which\nis intimately connected with the foregoing. These keys are more\nor less workable and command more or less respect; sometimes they\nseem fanciful or arbitrary; they are delivered only with curious\nprecautions, singly and grudgingly; and they are apt to unlock several\nsuperimposed meanings. And all this is accompanied by fantastic\nreticences, by so-called dangerous or terrible secrets, withheld at\nthe decisive moment, and by revelations which, it is contended, cannot\nbe communicated until many centuries have elapsed. Doors through which\nwe were about to pass are slammed in our faces just as we were at last\ncatching a glimpse of a long-promised horizon; and behind each of them\nhides a supreme initiate, a still living master, the sacred guardian\nof the ultimate mysteries, who knows all things, but can or will say\nnothing.\n\nObserve, moreover, that a host of more or less intelligent\n_illuminati_, of elderly women and unbalanced spinsters, of\nsimple-minded people who accept, blindly and off-hand, that which\nthey do not understand, of discontented, unsuccessful, vain or crafty\npersons who fish in troubled waters, in a word, all the usual suspect\nmob that gathers round any more or less mysterious doctrine, science\nor phenomenon, has discredited these first esoteric interpretations,\nof which the very source is none too dear. Lastly, let us add that the\nburning of the famous library of Alexandria, in which all the knowledge\nof the east was amassed, the destruction in the sixteenth century,\nunder the Mogul Akbar, of thousands of Sanskrit volumes, the systematic\nand merciless demolition, especially during the first few centuries\nof the Church and in the Middle Ages, of all that referred or alluded\nto this dreaded and embarrassing revelation, have deprived us of our\nbest means of control. The adepts, it is true, assert on the other hand\nthat the true texts, as well as the ancient commentaries which alone\nenable them to be understood, still exist in the secret crypts and\nsubterranean libraries of Thibet or the Himalayas, libraries of books\nmore innumerable than any which we possess in the west, and that they\nwill reappear in a more enlightened age. It is possible, but in the\nmeanwhile they are of no help to us.\n\n\n11\n\nBe this as it may, what we have is enough to perplex us greatly;\nand the control allowed by the fragments which have been saved from\nhistoric antiquity absolutely removes all suspicion of more or less\nrecent fraud or deception in respect of the essentials. Moreover, any\nfraud or deception of this nature seems hardly possible and would be\nso ingenious that we should be obliged to marvel at it as a phenomenon\nalmost as remarkable as that whereof it would be seeking to give the\nillusion; and we should have to admit that the mind of man has never\ninsinuated itself so far into the infinity of time and space, or\ninto the origin of things, and has never risen to such heights. Had\nthis revelation profited by all the attainments of our latter-day\nscience and thought, it could not have furnished us with theories\nmore satisfactory, more logical, more coherent, more plausible, more\nsynthetic, or worthier of the infinity which they strive to embrace\nand often seem to attain, on the rhythm of the eternities, the ebb\nand flow of the eternal Becoming, the never-ending cycle and the\nperiodic existences of the ego, the birth, movement and evolution of\nthe worlds, the divine breath and the intelligence that animate it, on\nMaya, the eternal illusion of ignorance, the struggle for life, natural\nselection, the gradual development and transformation of stars and\nmen, the functions and energies of the ether, immortal and infallible\njustice, the intermolecular and fantastic activity of matter, on the\nnature of the soul and the existence of the vast, nameless power that\ngoverns the universe, in a word, on all the riddles that assail and all\nthe mysteries that overwhelm us.\n\nBut, let us hasten to repeat it, there could not seriously be any\nquestion of fraud, because the texts or traditions that might be\nregarded with suspicion are corroborated by other texts, such as the\nsacred inscriptions of Egypt, which no one thinks of contesting. At\nmost we may come upon a few passages antedated by the imprudent\nzeal of adepts or commentators, a few interpolations which merely\nembroider the majestic lines. Taking it as a whole, we have to do with\na revelation which dates back infinitely farther than all that we\nhave called the prehistoric ages, wherefore it is legitimate that our\nastonishment should be unbounded.\n\n\n12\n\nVery good, it will be said, this interpretation of the universe, this\nanthropocosmogenesis is the loftiest, the most spacious, the most\nwonderful, the most unassailable that has ever been conceived; it\nteems in every part with human thought and imagination; but what is\nit all based upon? When all is said, we have here only magnificent\nhypotheses, boldly disguised as authoritative, dogmatic and peremptory\ndeclarations, but every one incapable of verification. This is the\nobjection which I myself put forward, a little hastily, in one of the\nearly chapters of _Our Eternity_.\n\nIt is indeed undeniable that we shall not for some time to come, that\nperhaps we shall never know the truth about the origin and the end of\nthe universe or any of the other problems which these declarations\nprofess to solve. But it is curious to note that science, despite\nitself, is daily drawing nearer to one or other of these declarations\nand that it is unable to set aside or to contradict any of them. There\nis for example, a certain study of the genesis of the elements, by the\nwell-known chemist, Sir William Crookes, which unconsciously becomes\nplainly occultist, while the discovery of the radioactivity of matter\nreproduces precisely the theory of vortices of the initiate Anaxagoras.\nIt is the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with the function attributed to\nthe ether, the latest, indispensable postulate of our scientists. It\nis the same with the supreme and essential functions of certain minute\nglands of which modern medicine is only now beginning to rediscover\nthe importance and which probably hold hidden the primordial secrets\nof life: the thyroid gland, which directs growth and intelligence;\nthe suprarenal gland, which governs the unconscious muscle that is the\nheart; and the pineal gland, the most mysterious of all, which brings\nus into relation with the unknown worlds. It is the same again with\nastronomy, when the manifest insufficiency of our so-called cosmic\nlaws, notably that of gravitation, propounds a host of questions which\nonly the cosmogony of the east is able to answer. But this would\nrequire a long enquiry, which I am not qualified to undertake.\n\nFor the rest, nothing obliges us to accept these declarations as\ndogmas. There is no question here of a religion which imposes upon us\nits blind faith, its _Credo quia absurdum_. We are quite entitled to\nregard them as mere hypotheses, as immense, incomparable antediluvian\npoems, of which the Mosaic Genesis is but a disfigured fragment.\nBut, even as hypotheses or poems, it must be admitted that they are\nprodigious, that we have nothing better, nothing more probable to set\nagainst them and that, in view of their incontestable antiquity, of\ntheir prehistoric origin, they seem really superhuman.\n\nMust we admit, as the occultists contend, that they come to us from\nbeings superior to man, from more spiritual entities, living under\nunknown conditions, who occupied our earth or the neighbouring planets\nbefore our coming; from a Lemuro-Atlantean civilization which, in\nits megalithic monuments, has left indelible traces in the memory of\nthe peoples and on the face of our earth? It is quite possible; but\nhere again we are free to await the confirmations of Hindu, Egyptian,\nChaldean, Assyrian and Persian arch\u00e6ology, which on this point, as on\nso many others, has not spoken its last word.\n\n\n13\n\nI am well aware that this revelation, as apparently all those which\nmay be made in the course of time, dates back to and ends in the\nunknowable, the insoluble mystery of divinity, of being, or existence;\nand it necessarily stops short before the barrier of this unknowable,\nwhich is as impenetrable and impregnable as a cliff that is infinite in\nevery dimension and formed of a single block of black diamond. There is\nnothing to be done; we can but halt; we cannot even seek to outflank\nit, to approach it from the other side, for the other side, if we could\nreach it, would necessarily be like the side in front of us, seeing\nthat the non-existence of everything would be just as inexplicable,\njust as incomprehensible as its existence. It is true that, in the\nsecret recesses of the doctrine, the universe and all that it contains\nis known as Maya, that is to say, the eternal illusion, so that the two\nirreconcilable mysteries unite in a still greater mystery which man\u2019s\nintelligence can no longer approach.\n\nFundamentally, the primitive riddle, the primordial mystery not\nbeing elucidated, all the rest illumines only the steps that lead\nfrom comparative knowledge to absolute ignorance. It will probably\nbe the same with all the revelations that may address themselves to\nman\u2019s intelligence so long as he continues on this planet, for this\nintelligence doubtless has limits which no effort can enlarge. But in\nthe meantime it is certain that these steps, which lead to nothing,\nnevertheless, at the first onset and from the earliest days led him\nto the highest point which his intelligence has attained or can hope\nto attain. The most ancient explanation embraces straightway all the\nattempts at explanation that have hitherto been offered. It harmonizes\nthe positivism of science with the most transcendental idealism; it\naccepts matter and spirit; it reconciles the mechanical impulsion\nof atoms and worlds with their intelligent guidance. It gives us\nan unconditioned divinity, \u201ca causeless cause of all the causes,\u201d\nworthy of the universe which is this divinity itself and of which all\nthe divinities that have succeeded it in all our religions are but\nscattered, mutilated and unrecognizable members. It offers us, lastly,\nin its law of Karma, by virtue of which each being undergoes in his\nsuccessive lives the consequences of his actions and gradually purifies\nhimself, the loftiest, justest and most unassailable, the most fertile,\nconsoling and hopeful moral principle that could ever be proposed to\nman. Because of all this it appears worthy of investigation, respect\nand admiration.\n\n\n14\n\nThis respect and admiration, however, do not militate against our\nliberty to choose or reject many things, or to reserve them while we\nwait for further light. When we are told, for instance, that the Cosmos\nis guided by an infinite series of hierarchies of sensient beings, each\nhaving a mission to fulfil, which are the agents of the Karmic and\nCosmic laws; when it is added that each of these beings was a man in\nan earlier Manvantara, or is preparing to become one in the present or\nin a future Manvantara, that they are perfected men, or nascent men,\nand that, in their higher and less material spheres, they do not differ\nmorally from terrestrial human beings save in that they do not possess\nthe sense of personality and of emotional nature; when, lastly, we are\nassured that what we call unconscious Nature is in reality a complex of\nforces manipulated by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) directed by\nthe High Planetary Spirits (Dhyani-Shohans), whose total forms the Word\nManifest of the non-manifest Logos and constitutes at the same time\nboth the intelligence of the universe and its immutable law, we can do\nhomage to the ingenuity of these speculations, as to that of thousands\nof others which perhaps embrace the truth more closely than our best\nand most recent scientific hypotheses; we are free to take what we\nplease from them and to leave what we please. All this, I grant, is\nby no means proved, is not verified, or cannot be verified, save in\ncertain details, whereas the great fundamental outlines will probably\nalways escape the control of our unequipped intelligence. But what we\nmust, I repeat, admire without reserve is the prodigious spiritual\nedifice offered by the sum total of this revelation, the immense\nintellectual effort which, since the dawn of humanity, has attempted\nto unravel the unfathomable chaos of the origin, structure, progress,\ndirection and end of the universe and which appears to have succeeded\nto this extent, that hitherto nothing has been found that equals it, or\nis not inspired by it or, often unconsciously, returns to it.\n\n\n15\n\nI said in the first part of this essay that too lofty a revelation,\neven were it incontestable, would have hardly any influence upon our\nlife, that it would change little in it, that it would occur too far\nfrom us in the immensity of space and that it would not sink into our\nhearts and minds. Was it thus with that of which we are now speaking,\nwhich is the only truly superhuman and yet acceptable and almost\nunassailable revelation that we have had? Yes and no, according to the\npoint of view which we take up. All that it contains of too great a\ncharacter, except its notion of eternity, has not really modified our\nideas, has not permeated into our habits. It has not even profoundly\naffected the peoples who have handed it down to us and who, abandoning\nany endeavour to understand it, have transformed it into a barbarous\nand monstrous anthropomorphic polytheism. It is more or less the same\neverywhere. All the religions, from the pagan religions of China and\nJapan, Gaul and ancient Germany, Mexico and Peru, down to Christianity\nwith its variants and its offshoots, have issued from it; but all\nhave not been able to live and govern men, save by disfiguring and\nmutilating it, by dwarfing it to the lowest stature of the souls of\ntheir time, by altering it beyond recognition. It is therefore highly\nprobable that matters would be the same with any other and greater\nrevelation, if such were possible, even though this had all the signs\nof a divine, direct, authentic, indubitable, irrefutable, irrecusable\nrevelation, in a word, with that which we are still awaiting without\ndaring to hope for it.\n\n\n\n\nTHE NECESSARY SILENCE\n\n\n\n\nXVII\n\nTHE NECESSARY SILENCE\n\n\n1\n\nThe practitioners of occult science in the east tell us of certain\ndwellers in the solitudes of Thibet and the Himalayas, Initiates,\nMasters, heirs to the wisdom of the \u201cSons of Light,\u201d or the \u201cSeven\nPrimordials,\u201d who possess the seven keys which enable them to\nunderstand the sacred prehistoric texts. They are said to be the silent\ndepositories of the secret of the intermolecular or interetheric\nforces, by the aid of which the races of beings who preceded man upon\nthis earth used to transport to enormous distances monoliths of more\nthan five hundred tons\u2019 weight, which have no relation to the stones\nthat surround them and whose arrangement and astronomical orientation\nmanifestly reveal the intervention of an intelligent and even a highly\nscientific mind.\n\nThese monoliths are sometimes carved, as for instance the famous\ncolossal idols in the valley of Bamian, in Afghanistan, of which one is\n173 feet high, or the five hundred and fifty monsters of Easter Island,\nin Polynesia, which, we may observe in passing, remain one of the most\ninsoluble and perplexing riddles in the world. Hewn out of basalt,\nreclining or standing erect upon their platforms, these sculptures,\none of which measures over 90 feet in height, are undoubtedly the most\nancient human effigies to be found upon our earth. Official science\nascribes to them an antediluvian origin, while esoteric tradition\nregards them as portraits of the giants of the last Atlantean race,\nwhich became degenerate and lapsed into witchcraft shortly before the\ndisappearance of the mysterious continent whereof Easter Island is\nsupposed to be merely one of the loftier summits to-day emerging from\nthe lonely Pacific.\n\nI have before me as I write the photographs of some of these haunting\ngiants; and I do not believe that in our most oppressive nightmares\nit would be possible to imagine faces more formidable, more impassive\nand unfeeling, more eternally ferocious, more coldly supercilious,\nmore pitilessly disdainful and icily omnipotent. Are they Selenites or\nMartians, with their tightly-closed, implacable mouths and those eyes\nof theirs, hollow, like wells of malediction, or protuberant and framed\nin an airman\u2019s goggles? They are not in any way simian, as one might\nhave supposed, but rather represent demoniacal and abstract entities,\nsuch as evil, doom and fatality. They seem not so much inhuman as\nprehuman or posthuman; and they bear a horrible relation to certain\nancestral memories which slumber in the marrow of our bones, warning us\nthat such faces undoubtedly once existed.\n\n\n2\n\nBut let us return to our great Initiates. They are, it appears, reputed\nto be the guardians of the irresistible and incommensurable sidereal\nforce, the force which supports and directs the worlds and which is\ncapable, if it were misused, of destroying in a moment the whole human\nspecies, all that lives upon the earth and this very earth itself;\nbut it is also capable, if it were wisely tamed, of ensuring man an\nultimate royalty, perhaps access to other heavenly bodies and, in any\ncase, a power so great that the Golden Age which existed of old, thanks\nto the subjection of this force, might flourish once more upon our\nplanet.\n\nAll this is possible; and, for the moment, we need not go into the\nmatter. But that, possessing the secret of this force and of many\nothers, transmitted from Hierophant to Candidate, or, as they say\n\u201cfrom mouth to ear,\u201d the experts in occult science do not divulge it\nand place it at the service of humanity: this is the great reproach\nbrought against them; and for all those who are not aware that the\nend of Initiation is not power and material happiness but wisdom,\ndevelopment and the uplifting of the inner being it is the best proof\nthat they are cheats and impostors. It may be that, driven into a\ncorner, they are silent because they have nothing to tell us; but the\nargument is not so unanswerable as those who avail themselves of it\nare inclined to think. We shall perhaps see this before long. It is\nindeed not impossible that one day some accident of knowledge will\nplace one or other of our scientists in a position analogous to that\nof these Masters or Initiates. To him also the terrible question of\nthe necessary silence will then present itself. We have but lately\nwitnessed in this war the insensate and demoniacal use which man has\nmade of certain inventions. What will happen if other energies are\nplaced in his hands, energies far more formidable, which we seem to be\non the point of discovering and releasing?\n\nMan is not ready to know more of such matters than he now knows. The\nsafety of the species is at stake. Humanity, which is hardly emerging\nfrom its infancy, or has only just attained the dangerous period of\nadolescence (it would be about sixteen or seventeen years of age,\naccording to Dr. Jaworski\u2019s well-supported and striking historic\nparallel), has already passed the limit of the inventions which it\nis able to assimilate or endure without incurring the risk of death.\nAlmost all of them, from the subjection of steam and the still dubious\ntaming of electricity, have done it incomparably more harm than good.\nExplosives, for example, which have helped it to build a few roads--a\nwork which the Romans, for that matter, did quite as well as we do--to\nopen up a few mines, to pierce a few tunnels, have cost it millions of\nyoung lives.\n\nPerhaps it is time, not to check the investigations of science, but\nto control its discoveries and to reserve, as the occultists wisely\ndid, for a select circle of Initiates, rigorously tested and bound by\ninviolable oaths, the secret of those too perilous energies around\nwhich we are feeling our way and which are on the point of revealing\nthemselves and becoming public property. Our moral evolution is several\ncenturies behind our scientific evolution; and it is more than probable\nthat the latter, being too swift and too intensive, may disastrously\nimpede the former. It will profit no one to travel in three hours from\nParis to Pekin, from Pekin to New York and from New York to Calcutta,\nif these repeated and miraculous journeys leave those who take them\nin the same frame of mind on their arrival as on their departure.\nWe are more or less in the same position as Russia, whose heart and\nspirit were not steadfast enough, not resolute enough, to bear what the\nhead had too quickly and too artificially stored up. Nothing is more\nquickly disseminated or more readily assimilated than the results of\nscience; nothing, on the other hand, is more slow, more painful or more\nprecarious than moral evolution; and yet it is upon this alone, as we\nare realizing more and more clearly, that man\u2019s happiness and future\ndepend.\n\n\n\n\nKARMA\n\n\n\n\nXVIII\n\nKARMA\n\n\n1\n\nStripped of its innumerable and inextricable oriental complications,\nwhich may possibly correspond with realities but which cannot be\nverified, Karma, the infallible Law of Retribution, is, when all is\nsaid, what we, speaking more vaguely and without believing in it\nunduly, call Immanent Justice. Our Immanent Justice is a somewhat\nidle shadow. True, it often manifests itself after monstrous actions,\ngreat vices, sins or iniquities; but we rarely have the opportunity\nof seeing it intervene in the thousand petty acts of injustice,\ncruelty, weakness, dishonesty and baseness of ordinary life, though\nthe aggregate of these paltry but incessant misdeeds may weigh heavier\nthan the most notorious crime. In any case, its action being more\ndispersed, more diffuse, slower and more often moral than material,\nnearly always escapes our observation; and, as, on the other hand, it\nappears to cease at the moment of death, it hardly ever has time to\ndemand its due and usually arrives too late at the bedside of a sick\nor dying man, who has lost consciousness or no longer has the time to\nexpiate his offences.\n\nKarma then, if you will, is Immanent Justice; only, it is no longer\nan inconstant goddess, inconsistent, incoherent, impotent, erratic,\ncapricious, inexact, forgetful, timid, inattentive, sluggish, evasive,\nintangible and bounded by the tomb, but a god, vast and inevitable as\nDestiny, a god who fills up each outlet, each horizon, each crevice\nof every existence and who is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent,\ninfallible, impassible and incorruptible. He is in us, as we are in\nhim. He is ourselves. He is more than we: he is what we are, while\nhe is still what we were and is already what we shall become. We\nare small, evanescent and ephemeral; he is great, imperturbable,\nimmovable, eternal. Nothing escapes him of that which escapes us and\nno doubt will escape us even beyond the tomb. Not an action, not a\nwish, not a thought, not the shadow of an intention but is weighed more\nstrictly than it was weighed by the forty-two posthumous judges who\nawaited the soul on that further shore of which we are told in one of\nthe most ancient texts in the world, the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_.\nAll is set down, dated, valued, verified, classified, entered as debit\nor credit, as reward or expiation, in the immense and eternal index\nof the astral records. There can be nothing that he does not know,\nbecause he has taken part in all that he judges; and he judges us not\nfrom the depth of our present ignorance, but from the height of all\nthat we shall learn much later. He is not only our intelligence and our\nconsciousness of to-day, which are hardly waking and no longer count\ntheir errors; he is even now, for they already dwell within us, though\nthey be inactive, impotent, dumb and blind, our intelligence and our\nconsciousness to come, when they shall have attained, in the course of\nthe ages and of the innumerable developments, expiations and ascents,\nthe loftiest summits of Wisdom and Discernment.\n\nAt the hour of our death the account seems closed; but he is simply\nasleep and will resume his hold of us again. He will slumber perhaps\nfor hundreds, nay, thousands of years in \u201cDevachan,\u201d that is to say, in\nthe state of unconsciousness which prepares us for a new incarnation;\nbut, when we awake, we shall find the assets and liabilities added up\nbeyond recall; and our Karma will merely continue the life which we\nhave laid aside. It will continue to be ourselves in that life and to\nsee the consequences of our faults and our deserts burst into flower\nand afterwards to see other causes bear fruit in other effects, until\nthe consummation of the ages when every thought born upon this earth\nends by losing sight of it.\n\n\n2\n\nKarma, as we see, is, when all is said, the immortal entity which man\nfashions by his deeds and thoughts and which follows him, or rather\nenvelops and absorbs him, through his successive lives and changes,\neven as he incessantly changes, while preserving every previous\nimpress. Man\u2019s thoughts, as this doctrine very truly says, build up his\ncharacter; his deeds make his environment. What man has thought, that\nhe has become; his qualities and natural gifts adhere to him as the\nresults of his ideas. He is, in all truth, created by himself. He is\nin the fullest sense of the word responsible for all that he is. He is\ncontained in the net of all that he has done. He can neither undo nor\ndestroy the past; but, so long as the effects of the past are yet to\ncome, it is possible for him to alter them or to divert them by fresh\nexertions. Nothing can affect him that he has not set in movement;\nno evil can befall him that he has not deserved. In the infinite\nevolution of the eternities he will never find himself in the presence\nof any judge other than himself.\n\n\n3\n\nIt is certain that the idea of this supreme judge, who is our\nconsciousness uninterrupted throughout the centuries and the\nmillenaries, who is each one of us grown more and more enlightened,\nmore and more incorruptible and infallible, leads to the highest,\nsincerest and purest system of morals that it is possible to conceive\nor to justify here below. The judge and the defendant are no longer\nface to face; they are one within the other and form but one and the\nsame person. They can hide nothing from each other; and both have the\nsame urgent interest in discovering the least fault, the slightest\nshadow and in purifying themselves as quickly and as completely as\npossible, in order to put an end to the reincarnations and to live at\nlast in the One Being. The best, the saintliest are near doing so from\nthe moment when they quit this life; but, detached from all things,\nthey do not cease to act for the good of all men, for already they know\nall things. They go farther than the mystic Christian who expects a\nreward from without: they are their own reward. They go farther than\nMarcus Aurelius, the great type of the man without illusions, who\ncontinues to act without hoping that his action can profit others: they\nknow that nothing is useless, that nothing can be wasted; it is when\nthey no longer need anything whatever that they work with the greatest\nardour.\n\nContrary to what is too generally believed, this system of morals which\nleads to absolute repose extols activity. Hear, in this connection,\nthe great teachings of the _Bhagavad-Gita_, the Lord\u2019s Song, which\nis perhaps, as its translators, not without good reason, think, the\nmost beautiful, that is to say, the most exalted book known up to the\npresent time:\n\n  \u201cThy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; so let\n  not the fruit of action be thy motive.... Perform action ... dwelling\n  in union with the divine, renouncing attachments and balanced evenly\n  in success and failure.... Pitiable are they who work for fruit....\n  Man winneth not freedom from action by abstaining from activity, nor\n  by mere renunciation doth he rise to perfection.... Perform thou\n  right action, for action is superior to inaction; and, inactive, even\n  the maintenance of thy body would not be possible. The world is bound\n  by action, unless performed for the sake of sacrifice....\n\n  \u201cHe who seeth inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise\n  among men, he is harmonious, even while performing all action. Whose\n  works are all free from the moulding of desire, whose actions are\n  burned up by the fire of wisdom, him the wise have called a sage.\n  Having abandoned attachment to the fruit of action, always content,\n  nowhere seeking refuge, he is not doing anything, although doing\n  actions.... He should be known as a perpetual ascetic, who neither\n  hateth nor desireth; free from the pairs of opposites ... he is\n  easily set free from bondage....\u201d\n\nAnd remember that this, which forms part of the _Mahabharata_, the\ngreatest epic on earth, was written four or five thousand years ago.\n\n\n4\n\nWhatever we may think of the plausibility of the doctrine or\nrevelation, we cannot dispute that this morality and this justification\nof justice are the most ancient and at the same time the most beautiful\nand reassuring that the mind of man has imagined. But they are based\nupon a postulate which we are perhaps too much inclined to refuse\nblindly. It asks us in fact to admit that our existence does not end at\nthe hour of our death and that the spirit, or the vital spark, which\ndoes not perish, seeks an asylum and reappears in other bodies. At\nfirst the postulate seems monstrous and unacceptable; but on closer\nexamination its aspect becomes much less strange, less arbitrary\nand less unreasonable. It is, to begin with, certain that, if all\nthings undergo transformation, nothing perishes or is annihilated in\na universe which knows no nothingness and in which nothingness alone\nremains absolutely inconceivable. What we call nothingness could\ntherefore be only another mode of existence, of persistence and of\nlife; and, if we cannot admit that the body, which is only matter,\nis annihilated in its substance, it is no less difficult to admit\nthat, if it were animated by a spirit--which it is hardly possible to\ndispute--this spirit should disappear without leaving a trace of any\nkind.\n\nSo the first point of the postulate and the most important is of\nnecessity granted. There remains the second point, that of the\nsuccessive reincarnations. Here, it is true, we have only hypotheses\nand probabilities. It is necessary that this spirit, this soul, this\nvital spark or principle, this idea, this immaterial substance--it\nmatters little what name we give it--must go or reside somewhere,\nmust do or become something. It may wander in the infinity of space\nand time, dissolve, lose itself and disappear, or at least mingle\nand become confused with what it encounters there, and finally\nbecome absorbed in that boundless spiritual or vital energy which\nappears to animate the universe. But, of all hypotheses, the least\nprobable is not that which tells us that, on leaving a body which has\nbecome uninhabitable, instead of escaping and wandering through the\nillimitable vast that fills it with terror, it looks about it for a\nlodging resembling that which it has lately quitted. Obviously this\nis only an hypothesis; but in our complete and terrible ignorance it\npresents itself before any other. We have nothing to support it save\nthe most ancient tradition of humanity, a tradition perhaps prehuman\nand in any case absolutely general; and experience tends to show that\nat the base of these traditions and these instances of universal assent\nthere is nearly always a great truth and that they must be accorded\na greater importance and a greater value than have hitherto been\nattributed to them.\n\n\n5\n\nAs regards evidence, or rather premonitory suggestions of evidence, we\nhave scarcely anything beyond the experiments of Colonel de Rochas,\nwho, by means of hypnotic passes, succeeded in making a few exceptional\nmediums retrace not only the whole course of their present lives,\nback to their earliest childhood, but also that of a certain number\nof previous existences. It cannot be denied that these extremely\nserious experiments, which were very scientifically conducted, are most\nbewildering; but the danger of unconscious suggestion or telepathy is\nnot and doubtless will never be sufficiently remote to allow them to\nbecome really conclusive.\n\nWe find further, on pursuing the same train of ideas, certain cases of\nreincarnation, like that of one of Dr. Samson\u2019s little daughters, as\nrelated in the _Annales des sciences psychiques_ for July, 1913. This\ncase, which is almost undisputed, is exceedingly curious; but, though\nit is not unique, those which resemble it are too rare to allow us to\nrely upon them.\n\nThere remains what are known as prenatal reminiscences. It happens\nfairly often that a man who finds himself in an unfamiliar country, in\na city, a palace, a church, a house, or a garden, which he is visiting\nfor the first time, is conscious of a strange and very definite\nimpression that he \u201chas seen it before.\u201d It suddenly seems to him\nthat this landscape, these vaulted ceilings, these rooms and the very\nfurniture and pictures which he finds in them are quite well-known to\nhim and that he recollects every nook and corner and every detail.\nWhich of us but has, at least once in his life, vaguely experienced\nsome such impression? But the recollections are often so definite that\nthe person in whom they occur is able to act as a guide through the\nhouse or park which he has never explored and to describe beforehand\nwhat his party will find in this or that room or at the turn of this\nor that avenue. Is it really a recollection of previous existences,\na telepathic phenomenon or an ancestral and hereditary memory? The\nsame question suggests itself touching certain innate aptitudes or\nfaculties, by virtue of which we see children of genius, musicians,\npainters, mathematicians or simple artisans, who know from the outset,\nwithout learning them, nearly all the secrets of their art or craft.\nWho will venture to decide?\n\nThis is about all that we can cite in favour of the doctrine of\nreincarnation. It is not enough to weigh down the scales. But all the\nother suppositions, theories or religions, excepting spiritualism,\nwhich for the rest is perfectly consistent with successive existences,\nhave less solid foundations and are even, to be truthful, devoid of\nany. It would therefore be ungracious on their part to reproach the\nsupposition which we are considering with the instability of the\narguments whereon it is based.\n\nOnce again, how desirable it would be that all this were true! There\nwould be no more moral uncertainties, no more uneasiness in respect of\njustice. And it is so beautiful, so complete, that it is perhaps real.\nIt is difficult indeed to admit that such a dream is untrue from first\nto last, a dream which has been dreamed so long, since the beginning of\nthe world, by so many thousands of millions of men and which, despite\nnumerous and far-reaching distortions, has, when all is said, been the\none dream of humanity. It is not possible to prove that it is based\nupon truth; but, unlike most of the religions derived from it, it is\nnot possible either to demonstrate that it is imaginary and fabricated\nthroughout; and, there being this doubt, why should not reason, which\nit never offends, be allowed to accept it and at heart to hope and\nact as though it were true, while waiting for science to confirm it\ncompletely, or to invalidate it, or to give us another hypothesis which\nit will perhaps never be able to elaborate?\n\nWhat at first repels many of those who investigate it is the unduly\nassured and arbitrary insistence upon a thousand petty details,\nprobably interpolated, as in all religions, by inferior minds, animated\nby a narrow and maladroit zeal. But these details, viewed from a\ncertain elevation, do not in any way alter the great outlines, which\nremain immeasurable, admirable and unspoiled.\n\n\n6\n\nFor the rest, whether reincarnation be accepted or rejected, there is\nsurely such a thing as survival, since death and nothingness cannot be\nconceived; and the whole matter is once more reduced to the problem\nof continued identity. Even in reincarnation this identity, from our\npresent, limited point of view, would possess only a relative interest,\nseeing that, all memory of previous existences being abolished, it\nwould necessarily evade us. Let us ask ourselves, moreover, whether\nthis question of personality without solution of continuity does\nreally possess the importance which we attach to it and whether this\nimportance is not a delusion, a temporary blindness of our egoism, of\nour terrestrial intelligence. For the fact remains that we interrupt\nit and lose it every night without disquieting ourselves. It is enough\nfor us to be certain that we shall recover it on awaking; and we are\nreassured. But suppose that this were not the case and that one evening\nwe were warned that we should not recover it, that on the following\nmorning we should have forgotten all our past existence and should\nbegin a new life, without any memory to connect us with the old. Should\nwe feel the same terror, the same despair, as if we had been told\nthat we should never wake again and that we should be hurled into our\ndeath? I do not believe it, I even think that we should accept our lot\nfairly cheerfully. It would not greatly matter to us that we should\nhave to lose the memory of a past, consisting, like the past of all of\nus, of more evil than good, provided that life continued. It would no\nlonger be our life, it would no longer have anything in common with\nthe life of the day before; nevertheless we should not believe that\nwe were losing it and we should retain a vague hope of recovering or\nrecognizing something of ourselves in the existence before us. We\nshould take pains to prepare for this existence, to insure it against\nmisfortune and distress, to make it, in advance, as pleasant and as\nhappy as possible. It might and ought to be so, not only if we believe\nin reincarnation, because the case would be almost identical, but also\nif we do not believe in it, since a survival of some sort is almost\ncertain and absolute annihilation is actually inconceivable.\n\n\n7\n\nPerhaps with a little courage and goodwill it would be possible for us,\neven in this life, to look higher and farther, to shed for an instant\nthat narrow and dismal egoism which refers all things to self, to tell\nourselves that the intelligence or the good which our thoughts and\nefforts diffuse in the spiritual spheres are not wholly lost, even\nwhen it is not certain that the little nucleus of trivial habits and\ncommonplace recollections that we are possesses them exclusively. If\nthe good actions which we have performed, the noble or merely honest\nintentions or thoughts which we have experienced attach themselves and\ngive value to a life in which we shall not recognize our own, this is\nnot a sufficient reason to regard them as useless or to deny them all\nmerit. It is well to remind ourselves at times that we are nothing\nif we are not everything and to learn from now onwards to interest\nourselves in something that is not solely ourselves and already to\nlive the ampler, less personal, less egotistical life which presently,\nwithout any doubt, whatever may be our creed, will be our eternal life,\nthe only life that matters and the only life for which it is wise to\nprepare ourselves.\n\n\n8\n\nIf we do not accept reincarnation, Karma none the less exists:\na mutilated Karma, it is true; a diminished Karma, devoid of\nspaciousness, with an horizon limited by death, beginning its work and\ndoing its best in the brief spell of time which it has before it, but\nless negligible, less impotent, less inactive and ineffective than\nis supposed. Acting within its narrow sphere, it gives us a fairly\naccurate albeit very incomplete idea of what it would accomplish in\nthe wider sphere which we deny it. But this would lead us back to the\nhighly debatable question of mundane justice. It is almost insoluble,\nbecause its decisive operations, being inward and secret, escape\nobservation. Following many others, who, for the rest, have explained\nit better than I, I have spoken of it elsewhere, particularly in\n_Wisdom and Destiny_ and in _The Mystery of Justice_;[3] but, as Queen\nScheherazade might say, it would serve no useful purpose to repeat it.\n\n\n9\n\nLet us then return to Karma properly so-called, the ideal Karma. It\nrewards goodness and punishes evil in the infinite sequence of our\nlives. But first of all, some will ask, what is this goodness, what\nis this evil, what is the best or the worst of our petty thoughts,\nour petty intentions, our petty ephemeral actions, compared with\nthe boundless immensity of time and space? Is there not an absurd\ndisproportion between the hugeness of the reward or punishment and the\npettiness of the fault or merit? Why mix the worlds, the eternities\nand the gods with things which, however monstrous or admirable at\nfirst, are not slow, even within the trivial limits of our life,\nto lose gradually all the importance which we ascribed to them, to\nvanish, to fade into oblivion? That is true; but we must needs speak\nof human things in terms of human beings and on the human scale. What\nwe call good or evil is that which works us good or evil, that which\nbenefits or harms ourselves or others; and, so long as we live upon\nthis earth and have not disappeared, we must needs attach to good\nand evil an importance which in themselves they do not possess. The\nnoblest religions, the proudest metaphysical speculations, so soon as\nthey involve human morality, human evolution and the human future,\nhave always been obliged to reduce themselves to human proportions, to\nbecome anthropomorphous. This is an invincible necessity, by virtue of\nwhich, despite the horizons that tempt us on every hand, it behoves us\nto limit our ideas and our outlook.\n\n\n10\n\nLet us then limit them and once more ask ourselves, this time remaining\nwithin our sphere, what, after all, is this evil which Karma punishes?\nIf we go to the very root of the matter, evil always arises from a lack\nof intelligence, from an erroneous and incomplete judgment, obscured\nor restricted by our egoism, which allows us to perceive only the\nproximate or immediate advantages of an action harmful to ourselves\nor others, while concealing the remote but inevitable consequences\nwhich such an action always ends by begetting. The whole science of\nethics, after all, is based only upon intelligence; and what we call\nheart, sentiments, character is in fact nothing but accumulated and\ncrystallized intelligence, inherited or acquired, which has become\nmore or less unconscious and is transformed into habits or instincts.\nThe evil which we do we do only because of a mistaken egoism, which\nsees the limits of its being too near at hand. As soon as intelligence\nraises the point of view of this egoism, the limits extend, widen and\nend by disappearing. The terrible and insatiable ego loses its centre\nof attraction and avidity and knows itself, finds itself and loves\nitself in all things. Let us not believe blindly in the intelligence of\nthe wicked who succeed, or in the happiness of the criminal. We ought\nrather to see the converse, that is to say, the often hideous reality\nof the success; moreover, this intelligence, in the shape of skill,\ncunning or disloyalty, is a specialized intelligence, confined within\na narrow circuit and, like a constricted jet of water, very effective\nwhen directed at a single point; but it is not a true and general,\nspacious and generous intelligence. Wherever the latter reveals\nitself, we necessarily find honesty, justice, forbearance, love and\nkindness, because there is a lofty and full horizon and because there\nis an instinctive or conscious knowledge of human proportions, of the\neternity of existence and the brevity of life, of man\u2019s position in the\nuniverse, of the mysteries that compass him about and the secret bonds\nthat unite him to all things that we see as well as to all things that\nwe do not see upon earth and in the heavens.\n\n\n11\n\nIs Karma, then, supposed to punish lack of intelligence? And, in the\nfirst place, why not? It is the only real evil upon this earth; and,\nif all men were superlatively intelligent, none would be unhappy.\nBut where would the justice of it be? We possess the intelligence\nwhich nature has bestowed upon us; it is she, not we, that should\nbe held responsible. Let us understand one another. Karma does not\ninflict punishment, properly speaking; it simply places us, after\nour successive existences and slumbers, on the plane on which our\nintelligence left us, surrounded by our actions and our thoughts. It\nkeeps a check and a record. It takes us such as we have made ourselves\nand gives us the opportunity to make ourselves anew, to acquire what\nwe lack and to raise ourselves to the level of the highest. We are\nbound to raise ourselves, but the slowness or rapidity of our ascent\ndepends only upon ourselves. When all is said, the apparent injustice\nwhich grants more intelligence to some than to others is but a question\nof date, a law of growth, of evolution, which is the fundamental law\nof all the lives that we know, from the infusoria to the stars. We\ncould at most complain of coming later than the rest; but the rest,\nin their turn, might with more reason complain of being called too\nsoon, of being unable to profit at once by all that has been acquired\nsince their birth. To avoid recrimination, therefore, we should all\nhave been on the same plane from the outset; we should all have been\nborn at the same time. But then the world would have been complete,\nperfect, immutable, immobile, from the first moment of its existence\nand ours. This would perhaps have been preferable; but it is not so\nand it is, no doubt, impossible that it should be so; in any case, no\nsystem of metaphysics, no religion, not even the first, the greatest,\nthe loftiest, the mother of all the rest, ever thought of rejecting the\nindisputable and indubitable law of endless movement, of the eternal\nBecoming; and it must be admitted that everything appears to justify\nit. It is probable that there would be nothing if it were otherwise and\nthat there can only be something on condition that it becomes better\nor worse, that it rises or falls, that it constitutes itself in order\nto deconstitute and reconstitute itself and that movement is more\nessential than being or substance. It is so because it is so. There is\nnothing to be done, nothing to be said; we can but state the fact. We\nare in a world in which matter would perish and disappear sooner than\nmovement, or rather in which matter, time, space, duration, existence\nand movement are but one and the same thing.\n\n\n12\n\nBut we also live in a world in which our reason encounters only the\nimpossible, the insoluble and the incomprehensible. The supreme\ninterpretations do no more than shift the riddle, to permit us to\nobtain glimpses from a higher standpoint of the boundless immensity in\nwhich we are striving. Therefore, apart from the puerile explanations\nwhich, after successive changes of form, all the religions have\ndrawn from the original religion, three hypotheses and no more offer\nthemselves for our choice: on the one hand, nothingness, inertia and\nabsolute death, which are inconceivable; on the other hand, chance and\nits eternal renewals, which are without change, hope, object or end, or\nwhich, if they led to anything, would lead either to an inconceivable\nannihilation or to the third hypothesis, according to which the best\nbecomes infinite, even to total absorption in the imperfectible, the\nimmutable, the immovable, which, as I have said elsewhere,[4] must have\noccurred already in the eternity that precedes us, since there is no\nreason why that which could not take place in this eternity should take\nplace in the eternity to come, which is no more infinite, is no more\nextensive and offers no more chances than the past eternity and which\nis not of a different nature.\n\nThe mother religion itself, the only one which is still acceptable,\nwhich takes account of everything and which has foreseen everything,\ndoes not escape this last dilemma by extending to thousands of\nmillions of years the duration of a year of Brahma, that is to\nsay, the period of evolution, of expiration, of externalization and\nactivity, and to an equal number of thousands of millions of years\nthe duration of a night of this god, that is to say, the period of\ninvolution, of inspiration, of internalization, of slumber or inertia,\nduring which all is reabsorbed into the divinity or the sole absolute.\nIt does not escape it either by next multiplying these days and nights\nby a hundred years which form one life and this life by a hundred\nlives which lead to figures that defy expression, after which another\nuniverse begins.\n\nHere, too, there would be either an eternal recommencement without hope\nor object, or, if there be progression, final perfection and immobility\nwhich ought already to be attained. Let each draw from all this such\nconclusions as he please or can, or bow once more, in silence, before\nthe Unknowable.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] The English translation of Fabre\u2019s works, by Alexander Teixeira de\nMattos, is issued in America by the publishers of the present volume.\n\n[2] In the volume, published in 1904, entitled _The Double Garden_.--A.\nT. de M.\n\n[3] The first essay in _The Buried Temple_.--A. T. de M.\n\n[4] In _Our Eternity_.--A. T. de M.\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES:\n\n\nItalicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.\n\nObvious typographical errors have been corrected.","title":"Mountain Paths","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":43316}