THE SIMPLE LIFE

 By CHARLES WAGNER _Author of The Better Way_

 _Translated from the French by Mary Louise Hendee_

 GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers, New York

 Copyright, 1901, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 

 CONTENTS

 Page

 I. OUR COMPLEX LIFE 1

 II. THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY 15

 III. SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT 22

 IV. SIMPLICITY OF SPEECH 39

 V. SIMPLE DUTY 52

 VI. SIMPLE NEEDS 68

 VII. SIMPLE PLEASURES 80

 VIII. THE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY 96

 IX. NOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD 111

 X. THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME 128

 XI. SIMPLE BEAUTY 139

 XII. PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN 151

 XIII. THE EDUCATION FOR SIMPLICITY 167

 XIV. CONCLUSION 188

THE SIMPLE LIFE

I

OUR COMPLEX LIFE

At the home of the Blanchards, everything is topsy-turvy, and withreason. Think of it! Mlle. Yvonne is to be married Tuesday, and to-dayis Friday!

Callers loaded with gifts, and tradesmen bending under packages, comeand go in endless procession. The servants are at the end of theirendurance. As for the family and the betrothed, they no longer have alife or a fixed abode. Their mornings are spent with dressmakers, milliners, upholsterers, jewelers, decorators, and caterers. After that, comes a rush through offices, where one waits in line, gazing vaguely atbusy clerks engulfed in papers. A fortunate thing, if there be time whenthis is over, to run home and dress for the series of ceremonialdinners--betrothal dinners, dinners of presentation, the settlementdinner, receptions, balls. About midnight, home again, harassed andweary, to find the latest accumulation of parcels, and a deluge ofletters--congratulations, felicitations, acceptances and regrets frombridesmaids and ushers, excuses of tardy tradesmen. And the_contretemps_ of the last minute--a sudden death that disarranges thebridal party; a wretched cold that prevents a favorite cantatrice fromsinging, and so forth, and so forth. Those poor Blanchards! They willnever be ready, and they thought they had foreseen everything!

Such has been their existence for a month. No longer possible tobreathe, to rest a half-hour, to tranquillize one's thoughts. _No, thisis not living!_

Mercifully, there is Grandmother's room. Grandmother is verging oneighty. Through many toils and much suffering, she has come to meetthings with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women ofhigh thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair, enjoying the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairssurging through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of thisretreat, voices are hushed and footfalls softened; and when the young_fiancés_ want to hide away for a moment, they flee to Grandmother. 

"Poor children!" is her greeting. "You are worn out! Rest a little andbelong to each other. All these things count for nothing. Don't let themabsorb you, it isn't worth while. "

They know it well, these two young people. How many times in the lastweeks has their love had to make way for all sorts of conventions andfutilities! Fate, at this decisive moment of their lives, seems bentupon drawing their minds away from the one thing essential, to harrythem with a host of trivialities; and heartily do they approve theopinion of Grandmamma when she says, between a smile and a caress:

"Decidedly, my dears, the world is growing too complex; and it does notmake people happier--quite the contrary!"

* * * * *

I also, am of Grandmamma's opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in hisneeds as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and ofhimself, the man of modern times struggles through a maze of endlesscomplication. Nothing is simple any longer: neither thought nor action;not pleasure, not even dying. With our own hands we have added toexistence a train of hardships, and lopped off many a gratification. Ibelieve that thousands of our fellow-men, suffering the consequences ofa too artificial life, will be grateful if we try to give expression totheir discontent, and to justify the regret for naturalness whichvaguely oppresses them. 

Let us first speak of a series of facts that put into relief the truthwe wish to show. 

The complexity of our life appears in the number of our material needs. It is a fact universally conceded, that our needs have grown with ourresources. This is not an evil in itself; for the birth of certain needsis often a mark of progress. To feel the necessity of bathing, ofwearing fresh linen, inhabiting wholesome houses, eating healthful food, and cultivating our minds, is a sign of superiority. But if certainneeds exist by right, and are desirable, there are others whose effectsare fatal, which, like parasites, live at our expense: numerous andimperious, they engross us completely. 

Could our fathers have foreseen that we should some day have at ourdisposal the means and forces we now use in sustaining and defending ourmaterial life, they would have predicted for us an increase ofindependence, and therefore of happiness, and a decrease in competitionfor worldly goods: they might even have thought that through thesimplification of life thus made possible, a higher degree of moralitywould be attained. None of these things has come to pass. Neitherhappiness, nor brotherly love, nor power for good has been increased. In the first place, do you think your fellow-citizens, taken as a whole, are more contented than their forefathers, and less anxious about thefuture? I do not ask if they should find reason to be so, but if theyreally are so. To see them live, it seems to me that a majority of themare discontented with their lot, and, above all, absorbed in materialneeds and beset with cares for the morrow. Never has the question offood and shelter been sharper or more absorbing than since we are betternourished, better clothed, and better housed than ever. He errs greatlywho thinks that the query, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" presents itself to the poor alone, exposed as they are to the anguish of morrows without bread or a roof. With them the question is natural, and yet it is with them that itpresents itself most simply. You must go among those who are beginningto enjoy a little ease, to learn how greatly satisfaction in what onehas, may be disturbed by regret for what one lacks. And if you would seeanxious care for future material good, material good in all itsluxurious development, observe people of small fortune, and, above all, the rich. It is not the woman with one dress who asks most insistentlyhow she shall be clothed, nor is it those reduced to the strictlynecessary who make most question of what they shall eat to-morrow. As aninevitable consequence of the law that needs are increased by theirsatisfaction, _the more goods a man has, the more he wants_. The moreassured he is of the morrow, according to the common acceptation, themore exclusively does he concern himself with how he shall live, andprovide for his children and his children's children. Impossible toconceive of the fears of a man established in life--their number, theirreach, and their shades of refinement. 

From all this, there has arisen throughout the different social orders, modified by conditions and varying in intensity, a common agitation--avery complex mental state, best compared to the petulance of a spoiledchild, at once satisfied and discontented. 

 * * * * *

If we have not become happier, neither have we grown more peaceful andfraternal. The more desires and needs a man has, the more occasion hefinds for conflict with his fellow-men; and these conflicts are morebitter in proportion as their causes are less just. It is the law ofnature to fight for bread, for the necessities. This law may seembrutal, but there is an excuse in its very harshness, and it isgenerally limited to elemental cruelties. Quite different is the battlefor the superfluous--for ambition, privilege, inclination, luxury. Neverhas hunger driven man to such baseness as have envy, avarice, and thirstfor pleasure. Egotism grows more maleficent as it becomes more refined. We of these times have seen an increase of hostile feeling amongbrothers, and our hearts are less at peace than ever. [A]

After this, is there any need to ask if we have become better? Do notthe very sinews of virtue lie in man's capacity to care for somethingoutside himself? And what place remains for one's neighbor in a lifegiven over to material cares, to artificial needs, to the satisfactionof ambitions, grudges, and whims? The man who gives himself up entirelyto the service of his appetites, makes them grow and multiply so wellthat they become stronger than he; and once their slave, he loses hismoral sense, loses his energy, and becomes incapable of discerning andpracticing the good. He has surrendered himself to the inner anarchy ofdesire, which in the end gives birth to outer anarchy. In the moral lifewe govern ourselves. In the immoral life we are governed by our needsand passions. Thus little by little, the bases of the moral life shift, and the law of judgment deviates. 

For the man enslaved to numerous and exacting needs, possession is thesupreme good and the source of all other good things. It is true that inthe fierce struggle for possession, we come to hate those who possess, and to deny the right of property when this right is in the hands ofothers and not in our own. But the bitterness of attack against others'possessions is only a new proof of the extraordinary importance weattach to possession itself. In the end, people and things come to beestimated at their selling price, or according to the profit to be drawnfrom them. What brings nothing is worth nothing: he who has nothing, isnothing. Honest poverty risks passing for shame, and lucre, howeverfilthy, is not greatly put to it to be accounted for merit. 

Some one objects: "Then you make wholesale condemnation of progress, andwould lead us back to the good old times--to asceticism perhaps. "

Not at all. The desire to resuscitate the past is the most unfruitfuland dangerous of Utopian dreams, and the art of good living does notconsist in retiring from life. But we are trying to throw light upon oneof the errors that drag most heavily upon human progress, in order tofind a remedy for it--namely, the belief that man becomes happier andbetter by the increase of outward well-being. Nothing is falser thanthis pretended social axiom; on the contrary, that material prosperitywithout an offset, diminishes the capacity for happiness and debasescharacter, is a fact which a thousand examples are at hand to prove. Theworth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its center. When thisman lacks moral rectitude, progress only makes bad worse, and furtherembroils social problems. 

[A] The author refers to the unparalleled bitterness of the conflict inFrance between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. 

 * * * * *

This principle may be verified in other domains than that of materialwell-being. We shall speak only of education and liberty. We rememberwhen prophets in good repute announced that to transform this wickedworld into an abode fit for the gods, all that was needed was theoverthrow of tyranny, ignorance, and want--those three dread powers solong in league. To-day, other preachers proclaim the same gospel. Wehave seen that the unquestionable diminution of want has made manneither better nor happier. Has this desirable result been more nearlyattained through the great care bestowed upon instruction? It does notyet appear so, and this failure is the despair of our nationaleducators. 

Then shall we stop the people's ears, suppress public instruction, closethe schools? By no means. But education, like the mass of our age'sinventions, is after all only a tool; everything depends upon theworkman who uses it. .. . So it is with liberty. It is fatal or lifegivingaccording to the use made of it. Is it liberty still, when it is theprerogative of criminals or heedless blunderers? Liberty is anatmosphere of the higher life, and it is only by a slow and patientinward transformation that one becomes capable of breathing it. 

All life must have its law, the life of man so much the more than thatof inferior beings, in that it is more precious and of nicer adjustment. This law for man is in the first place an external law, but it maybecome an internal law. When man has once recognized the inner law, andbowed before it, through this reverence and voluntary submission he isripe for liberty: so long as there is no vigorous and sovereign innerlaw, he is incapable of breathing its air; for he will be drunken withit, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law, can no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grownbird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yetattained to governing himself can no more live under the law of libertythan can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. Thesethings are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and newthat proves them, increases daily under our eyes. And yet we are as faras ever from understanding even the elements of this most important law. In our democracy, how many are there, great and small, who know, fromhaving personally verified it, lived it and obeyed it, this truthwithout which a people is incapable of governing itself? Liberty?--it isrespect; liberty?--it is obedience to the inner law; and this law isneither the good pleasure of the mighty, nor the caprice of the crowd, but the high and impersonal rule before which those who govern are thefirst to bow the head. Shall liberty, then, be proscribed? No; but menmust be made capable and worthy of it, otherwise public life becomesimpossible, and the nation, undisciplined and unrestrained, goes onthrough license into the inextricable tangles of demagoguery. 

* * * * *

When one passes in review the individual causes that disturb andcomplicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, andtheir list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, whichis this: _the confusion of the secondary with the essential_. Materialcomfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization--these thingsconstitute the frame of the picture; but the frame no more makes thepicture than the frock the monk or the uniform the soldier. Here thepicture is man, and man with his most intimate possessions--namely, hisconscience, his character and his will. And while we have beenelaborating and garnishing the frame, we have forgotten, neglected, disfigured the picture. Thus are we loaded with external good, andmiserable in spiritual life; we have in abundance that which, if mustbe, we can go without, and are infinitely poor in the one thing needful. And when the depth of our being is stirred, with its need of loving, aspiring, fulfilling its destiny, it feels the anguish of one buriedalive--is smothered under the mass of secondary things that weigh itdown and deprive it of light and air. 

We must search out, set free, restore to honor the true life, assignthings to their proper places, and remember that the center of humanprogress is moral growth. What is a good lamp? It is not the mostelaborate, the finest wrought, that of the most precious metal. A goodlamp is a lamp that gives good light. And so also we are men andcitizens, not by reason of the number of our goods and the pleasures weprocure for ourselves, not through our intellectual and artisticculture, nor because of the honors and independence we enjoy; but byvirtue of the strength of our moral fibre. And this is not a truth ofto-day but a truth of all times. 

At no epoch have the exterior conditions which man has made for himselfby his industry or his knowledge, been able to exempt him from care forthe state of his inner life. The face of the world alters around us, itsintellectual and material factors vary; and no one can arrest thesechanges, whose suddenness is sometimes not short of perilous. But theimportant thing is that at the center of shifting circumstance manshould remain man, live his life, make toward his goal. And whatever behis road, to make toward his goal, the traveler must not lose himself incrossways, nor hamper his movements with useless burdens. Let him heedwell his direction and forces, and keep good faith; and that he may thebetter devote himself to the essential--which is to progress--atwhatever sacrifice, let him simplify his baggage. 

II

THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY

Before considering the question of a practical return to the simplicityof which we dream, it will be necessary to define simplicity in its veryessence. For in regard to it people commit the same error that we havejust denounced, confounding the secondary with the essential, substancewith form. They are tempted to believe that simplicity presents certainexternal characteristics by which it may be recognized, and in which itreally consists. Simplicity and lowly station, plain dress, a modestdwelling, slender means, poverty--these things seem to go together. Nevertheless, this is not the case. Just now I passed three men on thestreet: the first in his carriage; the others on foot, and one of themshoeless. The shoeless man does not necessarily lead the least complexlife of the three. It may be, indeed, that he who rides in his carriageis sincere and unaffected, in spite of his position, and is not at allthe slave of his wealth; it may be also that the pedestrian in shoesneither envies him who rides nor despises him who goes unshod; andlastly, it is possible that under his rags, his feet in the dust, thethird man has a hatred of simplicity, of labor, of sobriety, and dreamsonly of idleness and pleasure. For among the least simple andstraightforward of men must be reckoned professional beggars, knights ofthe road, parasites, and the whole tribe of the obsequious and envious, whose aspirations are summed up in this: to arrive at seizing amorsel--the biggest possible--of that prey which the fortunate of earthconsume. And to this same category, little matter what their station inlife, belong the profligate, the arrogant, the miserly, the weak, thecrafty. Livery counts for nothing: we must see the heart. No class hasthe prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance, is its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, a hut, thecell of the ascetic nor the lowliest fisherman's bark. Under all theforms in which life vests itself, in all social positions, at the top asat the bottom of the ladder, there are people who live simply, andothers who do not. We do not mean by this that simplicity betrays itselfin no visible signs, has not its own habits, its distinguishing tastesand ways; but this outward show, which may now and then becounterfeited, must not be confounded with its essence and its deep andwholly inward source. _Simplicity is a state of mind. _ It dwells in themain intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is thewish to be what he ought to be, that is, honestly and naturally human. And this is neither so easy nor so impossible as one might think. Atbottom, it consists in putting our acts and aspirations in accordancewith the law of our being, and consequently with the Eternal Intentionwhich willed that we should be at all. Let a flower be a flower, aswallow a swallow, a rock a rock, and let a man be a man, and not a fox, a hare, a hog, or a bird of prey: this is the sum of the whole matter. 

Here we are led to formulate the practical ideal of man. Everywhere inlife we see certain quantities of matter and energy associated forcertain ends. Substances more or less crude are thus transformed andcarried to a higher degree of organization. It is not otherwise with thelife of man. The human ideal is to transform life into something moreexcellent than itself. We may compare existence to raw material. What itis, matters less than what is made of it, as the value of a work of artlies in the flowering of the workman's skill. We bring into the worldwith us different gifts: one has received gold, another granite, a thirdmarble, most of us wood or clay. Our task is to fashion thesesubstances. Everyone knows that the most precious material may bespoiled, and he knows, too, that out of the least costly an immortalwork may be shaped. Art is the realization of a permanent idea in anephemeral form. True life is the realization of the highervirtues, --justice, love, truth, liberty, moral power, --in our dailyactivities, whatever they may be. And this life is possible in socialconditions the most diverse, and with natural gifts the most unequal. Itis not fortune or personal advantage, but our turning them to account, that constitutes the value of life. Fame adds no more than does lengthof days: quality is the thing. 

Need we say that one does not rise to this point of view without astruggle? The spirit of simplicity is not an inherited gift, but theresult of a laborious conquest. Plain living, like high thinking, issimplification. We know that science is the handful of ultimateprinciples gathered out of the tufted mass of facts; but what gropingsto discover them! Centuries of research are often condensed into aprinciple that a line may state. Here the moral life presents stronganalogy with the scientific. It, too, begins in a certain confusion, makes trial of itself, seeks to understand itself, and often mistakes. But by dint of action, and exacting from himself strict account of hisdeeds, man arrives at a better knowledge of life. Its law appears tohim, and the law is this: _Work out your mission. _ He who applieshimself to aught else than the realization of this end, loses in livingthe _raison d'être_ of life. The egoist does so, the pleasure-seeker, the ambitious: he consumes existence as one eating the full corn in theblade, --he prevents it from bearing its fruit; his life is lost. Whoever, on the contrary, makes his life serve a good higher thanitself, saves it in giving it. Moral precepts, which to a superficialview appear arbitrary, and seem made to spoil our zest for life, havereally but one object--to preserve us from the evil of having lived invain. That is why they are constantly leading us back into the samepaths; that is why they all have the same meaning: _Do not waste yourlife, _ make it bear fruit; learn how to give it, in order that it maynot consume itself! Herein is summed up the experience of humanity, andthis experience, which each man must remake for himself, is moreprecious in proportion as it costs more dear. Illumined by its light, hemakes a moral advance more and more sure. Now he has his means oforientation, his internal norm to which he may lead everything back; andfrom the vacillating, confused, and complex being that he was, hebecomes simple. By the ceaseless influence of this same law, whichexpands within him, and is day by day verified in fact, his opinions andhabits become transformed. 

Once captivated by the beauty and sublimity of the true life, by what issacred and pathetic in this strife of humanity for truth, justice, andbrotherly love, his heart holds the fascination of it. Graduallyeverything subordinates itself to this powerful and persistent charm. The necessary hierarchy of powers is organized within him: the essentialcommands, the secondary obeys, and order is born of simplicity. We maycompare this organization of the interior life to that of an army. Anarmy is strong by its discipline, and its discipline consists in respectof the inferior for the superior, and the concentration of all itsenergies toward a single end: discipline once relaxed, the army suffers. It will not do to let the corporal command the general. Examinecarefully your life and the lives of others. Whenever something haltsor jars, and complications and disorder follow, it is because thecorporal has issued orders to the general. Where the natural law rulesin the heart, disorder vanishes. 

I despair of ever describing simplicity in any worthy fashion. All thestrength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything thatconsoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our darkpaths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendidgoal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those who have made another object of their desires than the passingsatisfaction of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the artof living is to know how to give one's life. 

III

SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT

It is not alone among the practical manifestations of our life thatthere is need of making a clearing: the domain of our ideas is in thesame case. Anarchy reigns in human thought: we walk in the woods, without compass or sun, lost among the brambles and briars of infinitedetail. 

When once man has recognized the fact that he has an aim, and that thisaim is _to be a man_, he organizes his thought accordingly. Every modeof thinking or judging which does not make him better and stronger, herejects as dangerous. 

And first of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himselfwith his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: itisn't a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter. The implements are all in place: everything indicates that thisassemblage of means is arranged with view to an end. Throw the room opento apes. They will climb on the benches, swing from the cords, rigthemselves in draperies, coif themselves with slippers, juggle withbrushes, nibble the colors, and pierce the canvases to see what isbehind the paint. I don't question their enjoyment; certainly they mustfind this kind of exercise extremely interesting. But an atelier is notmade to let monkeys loose in. No more is thought a ground for acrobaticevolutions. A man worthy of the name, thinks as he is, as his tastesare: he goes about it with his whole heart, and not with that fitful andsterile curiosity which, under pretext of observing and notingeverything, runs the risk of never experiencing a deep and true emotionor accomplishing a right deed. 

Another habit in urgent need of correction, ordinary attendant onconventional life, is the mania for examining and analyzing one's selfat every turn. I do not invite men to neglect introspection and theexamination of conscience. The endeavor to understand one's own mentalattitudes and motives of conduct is an essential element of good living. But quite other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant observation ofone's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like a piece ofmechanism. It is a waste of time, and goes wide of the mark. The manwho, to prepare himself the better for walking, should begin by making arigid anatomical examination of his means of locomotion, would riskdislocating something before he had taken a step. You have what you needto walk with, then forward! Take care not to fall, and use your forceswith discretion. Potterers and scruple-mongers are soon reduced toinaction. It needs but a glimmer of common sense to perceive that man isnot made to pass his life in a self-centered trance. 

And common sense--do you not find what is designated by this namebecoming as rare as the common-sense customs of other days? Common sensehas become an old story. We must have something new--and we create afactitious existence, a refinement of living, that the vulgar crowd hasnot the wherewithal to procure. It is so agreeable to be distinguished!Instead of conducting ourselves like rational beings, and using themeans most obviously at our command, we arrive, by dint of absolutegenius, at the most astonishing singularities. Better off the track thanon the main line! All the bodily defects and deformities that orthopedytreats, give but a feeble idea of the humps, the tortuosities, thedislocations we have inflicted upon ourselves in order to depart fromsimple common sense; and at our own expense we learn that one does notdeform himself with impunity. Novelty, after all, is ephemeral. Nothingendures but the eternal commonplace; and if one departs from that, it isto run the most perilous risks. Happy he who is able to reclaim himself, who finds the way back to simplicity. 

Good plain sense is not, as is often imagined, the innate possession ofthe first chance-comer, a mean and paltry equipment that has costnothing to anyone. I would compare it to those old folk-songs, unfathered but deathless, which seem to have risen out of the very heartof the people. Good sense is a fund slowly and painfully accumulated bythe labor of centuries. It is a jewel of the first water, whose value healone understands who has lost it, or who observes the lives of otherswho have lost it. For my part, I think no price too great to pay forgaining it and keeping it, for the possession of eyes that see and ajudgment that discerns. One takes good care of his sword, that it be notbent or rusted: with greater reason should he give heed to his thought. 

But let this be well understood: an appeal to common sense is not anappeal to thought that grovels, to narrow positivism which denieseverything it cannot see or touch. For to wish that man should beabsorbed in material sensations, to the exclusion of the high realitiesof the inner life, is also a want of good sense. Here we touch upon atender point, round which the greatest battles of humanity are waging. In truth we are striving to attain a conception of life, searching itout amid countless obscurities and griefs: and everything that touchesupon spiritual realities becomes day by day more painful. In the midstof the grave perplexities and transient disorders that accompany greatcrises of thought, it seems more difficult than ever to escape with anysimple principles. Yet necessity itself comes to our aid, as it has donefor the men of all times. The program of life is terribly simple, afterall, and in the fact that existence so imperiously forces herself uponus, she gives us notice that she precedes any idea of her which we maymake for ourselves, and that no one can put off living pending anattempt to understand life. Our philosophies, our explanations, ourbeliefs are everywhere confronted by facts, and these facts, prodigious, irrefutable, call us to order when we would deduce life from ourreasonings, and would wait to act until we have ended philosophizing. Itis this happy necessity that prevents the world from stopping while manquestions his route. Travelers of a day, we are carried along in a vastmovement to which we are called upon to contribute, but which we havenot foreseen, nor embraced in its entirety, nor penetrated as to itsultimate aims. Our part is to fill faithfully the rôle of private, whichhas devolved upon us, and our thought should adapt itself to thesituation. Do not say that we live in more trying times than ourancestors, for things seen from afar are often seen imperfectly: it ismoreover scarcely gracious to complain of not having been born in thedays of one's grandfather. What we may believe least contestable on thesubject is this: from the beginning of the world it has been hard to seeclearly; right thinking has been difficult everywhere and always. In thematter the ancients were in no wise privileged above the moderns, and itmight be added that there is no difference between men when they areconsidered from this point of view. Master and servant, teacher andlearner, writer and artisan discern truth at the same cost. The lightthat humanity acquires in advancing is no doubt of the greatest use; butit also multiplies the number and extent of human problems. Thedifficulty is never removed, the mind always encounters its obstacle. The unknown controls us and hems us in on all sides. But just as oneneed not exhaust a spring to quench his thirst, so we need not knoweverything to live. Humanity lives and always has lived on certainelemental _provisions_. 

We will try to point them out. First of all, humanity lives byconfidence. In so doing it but reflects, commensurate with its consciousthought, that which is the hidden source of all beings. An imperturbablefaith in the stability of the universe and its intelligent ordering, sleeps in everything that exists. The flowers, the trees, the beasts ofthe field, live in calm strength, in entire security. There isconfidence in the falling rain, in dawning day, in the brook running tothe sea. Everything that is seems to say: "I am, therefore I should be;there are good reasons for this, rest assured. "

So, too, mankind lives by confidence. From the simple fact that he is, man has within him the sufficient reason for his being--a pledge ofassurance. He reposes in the power which has willed that he should be. To safeguard this confidence, to see that nothing disconcerts it, tocultivate it, render it more personal, more evident--toward this shouldtend the first effort of our thought. All that augments confidencewithin us is good, for from confidence is born the life without haste, tranquil energy, calm action, the love of life and its fruitful labor. Deep-seated confidence is the mysterious spring that sets in motion theenergy within us. It is our nutriment. By it man lives, much more thanby the bread he eats. And so everything that shakes this confidence isevil--poison, not food. 

Dangerous is every system of thought that attacks the very fact of life, declaring it to be an evil. Life has been too often wrongly estimated inthis century. What wonder that the tree withers when its roots arewatered with corrosives. And there is an extremely simple reflectionthat might be made in the face of all this negation. You say life is anevil. Well; what remedy for it do you offer? Can you combat it, suppressit? I do not ask you to suppress your own life, to commit suicide;--ofwhat advantage would that be to us?--but to suppress _life_, not merelyhuman life, but life at its deep and hidden origin, all this upspringingof existence that pushes toward the light and, to your mind, is rushingto misfortune; I ask you to suppress the will to live that tremblesthrough the immensities of space, to suppress in short the source oflife. Can you do it? No. Then leave us in peace. Since no one can holdlife in check, is it not better to respect it and use it than to goabout making other people disgusted with it? When one knows that certainfood is dangerous to health, he does not eat it, and when a certainfashion of thinking robs us of confidence, cheerfulness and strength, weshould reject that, certain not only that it is a nutriment noxious tothe mind, but also that it is false. There is no truth for man but inthoughts that are human, and pessimism is inhuman. Besides, it wants asmuch in modesty as in logic. To permit one's self to count as evil thisprodigious thing that we call life, one needs have seen its veryfoundation, almost to have made it. What a strange attitude is that ofcertain great thinkers of our times! They act as if they had created theworld, very long ago, in their youth, but decidedly it was a mistake, and they had well repented it. 

Let us nourish ourselves from other meat; strengthen our souls withcheering thoughts. What is truest for man is what best fortifies him. 

* * * * *

If mankind lives by confidence, it lives also by hope--that form ofconfidence which turns toward the future. All life is a result and anaspiration, all that exists supposes an origin and tends toward an end. Life is progression: progression is aspiration. The progress of thefuture is an infinitude of hope. Hope is at the root of things, and mustbe reflected in the heart of man. No hope, no life. The same power whichbrought us into being, urges us to go up higher. What is the meaning ofthis persistent instinct which pushes us on? The true meaning is thatsomething is to result from life, that out of it is being wrought a goodgreater than itself, toward which it slowly moves, and that this painfulsower called man, needs, like every sower, to count on the morrow. Thehistory of humanity is the history of indomitable hope; otherwiseeverything would have been over long ago. To press forward under hisburdens, to guide himself in the night, to retrieve his falls and hisfailures, to escape despair even in death, man has need of hopingalways, and sometimes against all hope. Here is the cordial thatsustains him. Had we only logic, we should have long ago drawn theconclusion: Death has everywhere the last word!--and we should be deadof the idea. But we have hope, and that is why we live and believe inlife. 

Suso, the great monk and mystic, one of the simplest and best men thatever lived, had a touching custom: whenever he encountered a woman, wereshe the poorest and oldest, he stepped respectfully aside, though hisbare feet must tread among thorns or in the gutter. "I do that, " hesaid, "to render homage to our Holy Lady, the Virgin Mary. " Let us offerto hope a like reverence. If we meet it in the shape of a blade of wheatpiercing the furrow; a bird brooding on its nest; a poor wounded beast, recovering itself, rising and continuing its way; a peasant ploughingand sowing a field that has been ravaged by flood or hail; a nationslowly repairing its losses and healing its wounds--under whatever guiseof humanity or suffering it appears to us, let us salute it! When weencounter it in legends, in untutored songs, in simple creeds, let usstill salute it! for it is always the same, indestructible, the immortaldaughter of God. 

We do not dare hope enough. The men of our day have developed strangetimidities. The apprehension that the sky will fall--that acme ofabsurdity among the fears of our Gallic forefathers--has entered our ownhearts. Does the rain-drop doubt the ocean? the ray mistrust the sun?Our senile wisdom has arrived at this prodigy. It resembles those testyold pedagogues whose chief office is to rail at the merry pranks or theyouthful enthusiasms of their pupils. It is time to become littlechildren once more, to learn again to stand with clasped hands and wideeyes before the mystery around us; to remember that, in spite of ourknowledge, what we know is but a trifle, and that the world is greaterthan our mind, which is well; for being so prodigious, it must hold inreserve untold resources, and we may allow it some credit withoutaccusing ourselves of improvidence. Let us not treat it as creditors doan insolvent debtor: we should fire its courage, relight the sacredflame of hope. Since the sun still rises, since earth puts forth herblossoms anew, since the bird builds its nest, and the mother smiles ather child, let us have the courage to be men, and commit the rest to Himwho has numbered the stars. For my part, I would I might find glowingwords to say to whomsoever has lost heart in these times of disillusion:Rouse your courage, hope on; he is sure of being least deluded who hasthe daring to do that; the most ingenuous hope is nearer truth than themost rational despair. 

* * * * *

Another source of light on the path of human life is goodness. I am notof those who believe in the natural perfection of man, and teach thatsociety corrupts him. On the contrary, of all forms of evil, the onewhich most dismays me is heredity. But I sometimes ask myself how it isthat this effete and deadly virus of low instincts, of vices inoculatedin the blood, the whole assemblage of disabilities imposed upon us bythe past--how all this has not got the better of us. It must be becauseof something else. This other thing is love. 

Given the unknown brooding above our heads, our limited intelligence, the grievous and contradictory enigma of human destiny, falsehood, hatred, corruption, suffering, death--what can we think, what do? To allthese questions a sublime and mysterious voice has answered: _Love yourfellow-men. _ Love must indeed be divine, like faith and hope, since shecannot die when so many powers are arrayed against her. She has tocombat the natural ferocity of what may be called the beast in man; shehas to meet ruse, force, self-interest, above all, ingratitude. How isit that she passes pure and scathless in the midst of these darkenemies, like the prophet of the sacred legend among the roaring beasts?It is because her enemies are of the earth, and love is from above. Horns, teeth, claws, eyes full of murderous fire, are powerless againstthe swift wing that soars toward the heights and eludes them. Thus loveescapes the undertakings of her foes. She does even better: she hassometimes known the fine triumph of winning over her persecutors: shehas seen the wild beasts grow calm, lie down at her feet, obey her law. 

At the very heart of the Christian faith, the most sublime of itsteachings, and to him who penetrates its deepest sense, the most human, is this: To save lost humanity, the invisible God came to dwell amongus, in the form of a man, and willed to make Himself known by thissingle sign: _Love. _

Healing, consoling, tender to the unfortunate, even to the evil, loveengenders light beneath her feet. She clarifies, she simplifies. She haschosen the humblest part--to bind up wounds, wipe away tears, relievedistress, soothe aching hearts, pardon, make peace; yet it is of lovethat we have the greatest need. And as we meditate on the best way torender thought fruitful, simple, really conformable to our destiny, themethod sums itself up in these words: _Have confidence and hope; bekind. _

I would not discourage lofty speculation, dissuade any one whomsoeverfrom brooding over the problems of the unknown, over the vast abysses ofscience or philosophy. But we have always to come back from these farjourneys to the point where we are, often to a place where we seem tostand marking time with no result. There are conditions of life andsocial complications in which the sage, the thinker, and the ignorantare alike unable to see clearly. The present age has often brought usface to face with such situations; I am sure that he who meets them withour method will soon recognize its worth. 

* * * * *

Since I have touched here upon religious ground, at least in a generalway, someone may ask me to say in a few simple words, what religion isthe best; and I gladly express myself on this subject. But it might bebetter not to put the question in this form. All religions have, ofnecessity, certain fixed characteristics, and each has its inherentqualities or defects. Strictly speaking, then, they may be comparedamong themselves: but there are always involuntary partialities orforegone conclusions. It is better to put the question otherwise, andask: Is my own religion good, and how may I know it? To this question, this answer: Your religion is good if it is vital and active, if itnourishes in you confidence, hope, love, and a sentiment of the infinitevalue of existence; if it is allied with what is best in you againstwhat is worst, and holds forever before you the necessity of becoming anew man; if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if itincreases your respect for the conscience of others; if it rendersforgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty more dear, the beyondless visionary. If it does these things it is good, little matter itsname: however rudimentary it may be, when it fills this office it comesfrom the true source, it binds you to man and to God. 

But does it perchance serve to make you think yourself better thanothers, quibble over texts, wear sour looks, domineer over others'consciences or give your own over to bondage; stifle your scruples, follow religious forms for fashion or gain, do good in the hope ofescaping future punishment?--oh, then, if you proclaim yourself thefollower of Buddha, Moses, Mahomet, or even Christ, your religion isworthless--it separates you from God and man. 

I have not perhaps the right to speak thus in my own name; but othershave so spoken before me who are greater than I, and notably He whorecounted to the questioning scribe the parable of the Good Samaritan. Iintrench myself behind His authority. 

IV

SIMPLICITY OF SPEECH

Speech is the chief revelation of the mind, the first visible form thatit takes. As the thought, so the speech. To better one's life in the wayof simplicity, one must set a watch on his lips and his pen. Let theword be as genuine as the thought, as artless, as valid: think justly, speak frankly. 

All social relations have their roots in mutual trust, and this trust ismaintained by each man's sincerity. Once sincerity diminishes, confidence is weakened, society suffers, apprehension is born. This istrue in the province of both natural and spiritual interests. Withpeople whom we distrust, it is as difficult to do business as to searchfor scientific truth, arrive at religious harmony, or attain to justice. When one must first question words and intentions, and start from thepremise that everything said and written is meant to offer us illusionin place of truth, life becomes strangely complicated. This is the caseto-day. There is so much craft, so much diplomacy, so much subtlelegerdemain, that we all have no end of trouble to inform ourselves onthe simplest subject and the one that most concerns us. Probably what Ihave just said would suffice to show my thought, and each one'sexperience might bring to its support an ample commentary withillustrations. But I am none the less moved to insist on this point, andto strengthen my position with examples. 

Formerly the means of communication between men were considerablyrestricted. It was natural to suppose that in perfecting and multiplyingavenues of information, a better understanding would be brought about. Nations would learn to love each other as they became acquainted;citizens of one country would feel themselves bound in closerbrotherhood as more light was thrown on what concerned their commonlife. When printing was invented, the cry arose: _fiat lux!_ and withbetter cause when the habit of reading and the taste for newspapersincreased. Why should not men have reasoned thus:--"Two lights illuminebetter than one, and many better than two: the more periodicals andbooks there are, the better we shall know what happens, and those whowish to write history after us will be right fortunate; their hands willbe full of documents"? Nothing could have seemed more evident. Alas!this reasoning was based upon the nature and capacity of theinstruments, without taking into account the human element, always themost important factor. And what has really come about is this: thatcavilers, calumniators, and crooks--all gentlemen glib of tongue, whoknow better than any one else how to turn voice and pen to account--havetaken the utmost advantage of these extended means for circulatingthought, with the result that the men of our times have the greatestdifficulty in the world to know the truth about their own age and theirown affairs. For every newspaper that fosters good feeling and goodunderstanding between nations, by trying to rightly inform its neighborsand to study them without reservations, how many spread defamation anddistrust! What unnatural and dangerous currents of opinion set inmotion! what false alarms and malicious interpretations of words andfacts! And in domestic affairs we are not much better informed than inforeign. As to commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests, political parties and social tendencies, or the personality of publicmen, it is alike difficult to obtain a disinterested opinion. The morenewspapers one reads, the less clearly he sees in these matters. Thereare days when after having read them all, and admitting that he takesthem at their word, the reader finds himself obliged to draw thisconclusion:--Unquestionably nothing but corruption can be found anylonger--no men of integrity except a few journalists. But the last partof the conclusion falls in its turn. It appears that the chroniclersdevour each other. The reader has under his eyes a spectacle somewhatlike the cartoon entitled, "The Combat of the Serpents. " After havinggorged themselves with everything around them, the reptiles fall uponeach other, and there remain upon the field of battle two tails. 

And not the common people alone feel this embarrassment, but thecultivated also--almost everybody shares it. In politics, finance, business--even in science, art, literature and religion, there iseverywhere disguise, trickery, wire-pulling; one truth for the public, another for the initiated. The result is that everybody is deceived. Itis vain to be behind the scenes on one stage; a man cannot be there onthem all, and the very people who deceive others with the most ability, are in turn deceived when they need to count upon the sincerity of theirneighbors. 

The result of such practices is the degradation of human speech. It isdegraded first in the eyes of those who manipulate it as a baseinstrument. No word is respected by sophists, casuists, and quibblers, men who are moved only by a rage for gaining their point, or who assumethat their interests are alone worth considering. Their penalty is to beforced to judge others by the rule they follow themselves: _Say whatprofits and not what is true. _ They can no longer take any oneseriously--a sad state of mind for those who write or teach! How lightlymust one hold his readers and hearers to approach them in such anattitude! To him who has preserved enough honesty, nothing is morerepugnant than the careless irony of an acrobat of the tongue or pen, who tries to dupe honest and ingenuous men. On one side openness, sincerity, the desire to be enlightened; on the other, chicanery makinggame of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far he is misleadinghimself. The capital on which he lives is confidence, and nothing equalsthe confidence of the people, unless it be their distrust when once theyfind themselves betrayed. They may follow for a time the exploiters oftheir artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doorswhich stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears onceattentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to theevil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort anddegrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as acalamity the debasement of the currency, the lowering of interest, theabolition of credit:--there is a misfortune greater than these: the lossof confidence, of that moral credit which honest people give oneanother, and which makes speech circulate like an authentic currency. Away with counterfeiters, speculators, rotten financiers, for they bringunder suspicion even the coin of the realm. Away with the makers ofcounterfeit speech, for because of them there is no longer confidence inanyone or anything, and what they say and write is not worth acontinental. 

You see how urgent it is that each should guard his lips, chasten hispen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only tocomplicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour ofplain-dealing does more for the salvation of the world than years ofduplicity. 

* * * * *

A word now about a national bias, to those who have a veneration fordiction and style. Assuredly there can be no quarrel with the taste forgrace and elegance of speech. I am of opinion that one cannot say toowell what he has to say. But it does not follow that the things bestsaid and best written are most studied. Words should serve the fact, andnot substitute themselves for it and make it forgotten in itsembellishment. The greatest things are those which gain the most bybeing said most simply, since thus they show themselves for what theyare: you do not throw over them the veil, however transparent, ofbeautiful discourse, nor that shadow so fatal to truth, called thewriter's vanity. Nothing so strong, nothing so persuasive, assimplicity! There are sacred emotions, cruel griefs, splendid heroisms, passionate enthusiasms that a look, a movement, a cry interprets betterthan beautifully rounded periods. The most precious possessions of theheart of humanity manifest themselves most simply. To be convincing, athing must be true, and certain truths are more evident when they comein the speech of ingenuousness, even weakness, than when they fall fromlips too well trained, or are proclaimed with trumpets. And these rulesare good for each of us in his every-day life. No one can imagine whatprofit would accrue to his moral life from the constant observation ofthis principle: Be sincere, moderate, simple in the expression of yourfeelings and opinions, in private and public alike; never pass beyondbounds, give out faithfully what is within you, and above all, watch!--that is the main thing. 

For the danger in fine words is that they live from a life of their own. They are servants of distinction, that have kept their titles but nolonger perform their functions--of which royal courts offer us example. You speak well, write well, and all is said. How many people contentthemselves with speaking, and believe that it exempts them from acting!And those who listen are content with having heard them. So it sometimeshappens that a life may in the end be made up of a few well-turnedspeeches, a few fine books, and a few great plays. As for practicingwhat is so magisterially set forth, that is the last thing thought of. And if we pass from the world of talent to spheres which the mediocreexploit, there, in a pell-mell of confusion, we see those who think thatwe are in the world to talk and hear others talk--the great and hopelessrout of babblers, of everything that prates, bawls, and perorates and, after all, finds that there isn't talking enough. They all forget thatthose who make the least noise do the most work. An engine that expendsall its steam in whistling, has nothing left with which to turn wheels. Then let us cultivate silence. All that we can save in noise we gain inpower. 

* * * * *

These reflections lead us to consider a similar subject, also veryworthy of attention: I mean what has been called "the vice of thesuperlative. " If we study the inhabitants of a country, we noticedifferences of temperament, of which the language shows signs. Here thepeople are calm and phlegmatic; their speech is jejune, lacks color. Elsewhere temperaments are more evenly balanced; one finds precision, the word exactly fitted to the thing. But farther on--effect of the sun, the air, the wine perhaps--hot blood courses in the veins, tempers areexcitable, language is extravagant, and the simplest things are said inthe strongest terms. 

If the type of speech varies with climate, it differs also with epochs. Compare the language, written or spoken, of our own times with that ofcertain other periods of our history. Under the old _régime_, peoplespoke differently than at the time of the Revolution, and we have notthe same language as the men of 1830, 1848, or the Second Empire. Ingeneral, language is now characterized by greater simplicity: we nolonger wear perukes, we no longer write in lace frills: but there is onesignificant difference between us and almost all of our ancestors--andit is the source of our exaggerations--our nervousness. Uponover-excited nervous systems--and Heaven knows that to have nerves is nolonger an aristocratic privilege!--words do not produce the sameimpression as under normal conditions. And quite as truly, simplelanguage does not suffice the man of over-wrought sensibilities when hetries to express what he feels. In private life, in public, in books, onthe stage, calm and temperate speech has given place to excess. Themeans that novelists and playwrights employ to galvanize the public mindand compel its attention, are to be found again, in their rudiments, inour most commonplace conversations, in our letter-writing, and above allin public speaking. Our performances in language compared to those of aman well-balanced and serene, are what our hand-writing is compared tothat of our fathers. The fault is laid to steel pens. If only the truthwere acknowledged!--Geese, then, could save us! But the evil goesdeeper; it is in ourselves. We write like men possessed: the pen of ourancestors was more restful, more sure. Here we face one of the resultsof our modern life, so complicated and so terribly exhaustive of energy. It leaves us impatient, breathless, in perpetual trepidation. Ourhand-writing, like our speech, suffers thereby and betrays us. Let us goback from the effect to the cause, and understand well the warning itbrings us!

What good can come from this habit of exaggerated speech? Falseinterpreters of our own impressions, we can not but warp the minds ofour fellow-men as well as our own. Between people who exaggerate, goodunderstanding ceases. Ruffled tempers, violent and useless disputes, hasty judgments devoid of all moderation, the utmost extravagance ineducation and social life--these things are the result of intemperanceof speech. 

* * * * *

May I be permitted, in this appeal for simplicity of speech, to frame awish whose fulfilment would have the happiest results? I ask forsimplicity in literature, not only as one of the best remedies for thedejection of our souls--_blasés_, jaded, weary of eccentricities--butalso as a pledge and source of social union. I ask also for simplicityin art. Our art and our literature are reserved for the privileged fewof education and fortune. But do not misunderstand me. I do not askpoets, novelists, and painters to descend from the heights and walkalong the mountain-sides, finding their satisfaction in mediocrity; but, on the contrary, to mount higher. The truly popular is not that whichappeals to a certain class of society ordinarily called the commonpeople; the truly popular is what is common to all classes and unitesthem. The sources of inspiration from which perfect art springs are inthe depths of the human heart, in the eternal realities of life beforewhich all men are equal. And the sources of a popular language must befound in the small number of simple and vigorous forms which expresselementary sensations, and draw the master lines of human destiny. Inthem are truth, power, grandeur, immortality. Is there not enough insuch an ideal to kindle the enthusiasm of youth, which, sensible thatthe sacred flame of the beautiful is burning within, feels pity, and tothe disdainful adage, _Odi profanum vulgus_, prefers this more humanesaying, _Misereor super turbam_. As for me, I have no artisticauthority, but from out the multitude where I live, I have the right toraise my cry to those who have been given talents, and say to them:Labor for men whom the world forgets, make yourselves intelligible tothe humble, so shall you accomplish a work of emancipation and peace; soshall you open again the springs whence those masters drew, whose workshave defied the ages because they knew how to clothe genius insimplicity. 

V

SIMPLE DUTY

When we talk to children on a subject that annoys them, they call ourattention to some pigeon on the roof, giving food to its little one, orsome coachman down in the street who is abusing his horse. Sometimesthey even maliciously propose one of those alarming questions that putthe minds of parents on the rack; all this to divert attention from thedistressing topic. I fear that in the face of duty we are big children, and, when that is the theme, seek subterfuges to distract us. 

The first sophism consists in asking ourselves if there is such a thingas duty in the abstract, or if this word does not cover one of thenumerous illusions of our forefathers. For duty, in truth, supposesliberty, and the question of liberty leads us into metaphysics. How canwe talk of liberty so long as this grave problem of free-will is notsolved? Theoretically there is no objection to this; and if life were atheory, and we were here to work out a complete system of the universe, it would be absurd to concern ourselves with duty until we had clarifiedthe subject of liberty, determined its conditions, fixed its limits. 

But life is not a theory. In this question of practical morality, as inthe others, life has preceded hypothesis, and there is no room tobelieve that she ever yields it place. This liberty--relative, I admit, like everything we are acquainted with, for that matter--this duty whoseexistence we question, is none the less the basis of all the judgmentswe pass upon ourselves and our fellow-men. We hold each other to acertain extent responsible for our deeds and exploits. 

The most ardent theorist, once outside of his theory, scruples not awhit to approve or disapprove the acts of others, to take measuresagainst his enemies, to appeal to the generosity and justice of those hewould dissuade from an unworthy step. One can no more rid himself of thenotion of moral obligation than of that of time or space; and as surelyas we must resign ourselves to walking before we know how to define thisspace through which we move and this time that measures our movements, so surely must we submit to moral obligation before having put ourfinger on its deep-hidden roots. Moral law dominates man, whether herespects or defies it. See how it is in every-day life: each one isready to cast his stone at him who neglects a plain duty, even if heallege that he has not yet arrived at philosophic certitude. Everybodywill say to him, and with excellent reason: "Sir, we are men beforeeverything. First play your part, do your duty as citizen, father, son;after that you shall return to the course of your meditations. "

However, let us be well understood. We should not wish to turn anyoneaway from scrupulous research into the foundations of morality. Nothought which leads men to concern themselves once more with these gravequestions, could be useless or indifferent. We simply challenge thethinker to find a way to wait till he has unearthed these foundations, before he does an act of humanity, of honesty or dishonesty, of valor orcowardice. And most of all do we wish to formulate a reply for all theinsincere who have never tried to philosophize, and for ourselves whenwe would offer our state of philosophic doubt in justification of ourpractical omissions. From the simple fact that we are men, before alltheorizing, positive, or negative, about duty, we have the peremptorylaw to conduct ourselves like men. There is no getting out of it. 

But he little knows the resources of the human heart, who counts on theeffect of such a reply. It matters not that it is itself unanswerable;it cannot keep other questions from arising. The sum of our pretexts forevading duty is equal to the sum of the sands of the sea or the stars ofheaven. 

We take refuge, then, behind duty that is obscure, difficult, contradictory. And these are certainly words to call up painfulmemories. To be a man of duty and to question one's route, grope in thedark, feel one's self torn between the contrary solicitations ofconflicting calls, or again, to face a duty gigantic, overwhelming, beyond our strength--what is harder! And such things happen. We wouldneither deny nor contest the tragedy in certain situations or theanguish of certain lives. And yet, duty rarely has to make itself plainacross such conflicting circumstances, or to be struck out from thetortured mind like lightning from a storm-cloud. Such formidable shocksare exceptional. Well for us if we stand staunch when they come! But ifno one is astonished that oaks are uprooted by the whirlwind, that awayfarer stumbles at night on an unknown road, or that a soldier caughtbetween two fires is vanquished, no more should he condemn withoutappeal those who have been worsted in almost superhuman moral conflicts. To succumb under the force of numbers or obstacles has never beencounted a disgrace. 

So my weapons are at the service of those who intrench themselvesbehind the impregnable rampart of duty ill-defined, complicated orcontradictory. But it is not that which occupies me to-day; it is ofplain, I had almost said easy duty, that I wish to speak. 

* * * * *

We have yearly three or four high feast days, and many ordinary ones:there are likewise some very great and dark combats to wage, but besidethese is the multitude of plain and simple duties. Now, while in thegreat encounters our equipment is generally adequate, it is precisely inthe little emergencies that we are found wanting. Without fear of beingmisled by a paradoxical form of thought, I affirm, then, that theessential thing is to fulfil our simple duties and exercise elementaryjustice. In general, those who lose their souls do so not because theyfail to rise to difficult duty, but because they neglect to perform thatwhich is simple. Let us illustrate this truth. 

He who tries to penetrate into the humble underworld of society is notslow to discover great misery, physical and moral. And the closer helooks, the greater number of unfortunates does he discover, till in theend this assembly of the wretched appears to him like a great blackworld, in whose presence the individual and his means of relief arereduced to helplessness. It is true that he feels impelled to run to thesuccor of these unfortunates, but at the same time he asks himself, "What is the use?" The case is certainly heartrending. Some, in despair, end by doing nothing. They lack neither pity nor good intention, butthese bear no fruit. They are wrong. Often a man has not the means to dogood on a large scale, but that is not a reason for failing to do it atall. So many people absolve themselves from any action, on the groundthat there is too much to do! They should be recalled to simple duty, and this duty in the case of which we speak is that each one, accordingto his resources, leisure and capacity, should create relations forhimself among the world's disinherited. There are people who by theexercise of a little good-will have succeeded in enrolling themselvesamong the followers of ministers, and have ingratiated themselves withprinces. Why should you not succeed in forming relations with the poor, and in making acquaintances among the workers who lack somewhat thenecessities of life? When a few families are known, with theirhistories, their antecedents and their difficulties, you may be of thegreatest use to them by acting the part of a brother, with the moral andmaterial aid that is yours to give. It is true, you will have attackedonly one little corner, but you will have done what you could, andperhaps have led another on to follow you. Instead of stopping at theknowledge that much wretchedness, hatred, disunion and vice exist insociety, you will have introduced a little good among these evils. Andby however slow degrees such kindness as yours is emulated, the goodwill sensibly increase and the evil diminish. Even were you to remainalone in this undertaking, you would have the assurance that infulfilling the duty, plain as a child's, which offered itself, you weredoing the only reasonable thing. If you have felt it so, you have foundout one of the secrets of right living. 

In its dreams, man's ambition embraces vast limits, but it is rarelygiven us to achieve great things, and even then, a quick and suresuccess always rests on a groundwork of patient preparation. Fidelity insmall things is at the base of every great achievement. We too oftenforget this, and yet no truth needs more to be kept in mind, particularly in the troubled eras of history and in the crises ofindividual life. In shipwreck a splintered beam, an oar, any scrap ofwreckage, saves us. On the tumbling waves of life, when everything seemsshattered to fragments, let us not forget that a single one of thesepoor bits may become our plank of safety. To despise the remnants isdemoralization. 

You are a ruined man, or you are stricken by a great bereavement, oragain, you see the fruit of toilsome years perish before your eyes. Youcannot rebuild your fortune, raise the dead, recover your lost toil, andin the face of the inevitable, your arms drop. Then you neglect to carefor your person, to keep your house, to guide your children. All this ispardonable, and how easy to understand! But it is exceedingly dangerous. To fold one's hands and let things take their course, is to transformone evil into worse. You who think that you have nothing left to lose, will by that very thought lose what you have. Gather up the fragmentsthat remain to you, and keep them with scrupulous care. In good timethis little that is yours will be your consolation. The effort made willcome to your relief, as the effort missed will turn against you. Ifnothing but a branch is left for you to cling to, cling to that branch;and if you stand alone in defense of a losing cause, do not throw downyour arms to join the rout. After the deluge a few survivors repeopledthe earth. The future sometimes rests in a single life as truly as lifesometimes hangs by a thread. For strength, go to history and Nature. From the long travail of both you will learn that failure and fortunealike may come from the slightest cause, that it is not wise to neglectdetail, and, above all, that we must know how to wait and to beginagain. 

In speaking of simple duty I cannot help thinking of military life, andthe examples it offers to combatants in this great struggle. He wouldlittle understand his soldier's duty who, the army once beaten, shouldcease to brush his garments, polish his rifle, and observe discipline. "But what would be the use?" perhaps you ask. Are there not variousfashions of being vanquished? Is it an indifferent matter to add todefeat, discouragement, disorder, and demoralization? No, it shouldnever be forgotten that the least display of energy in these terriblemoments is a sign of life and hope. At once everybody feels that all isnot lost. 

During the disastrous retreat of 1813-1814, in the heart of the winter, when it had become almost impossible to present any sort of appearance, a general, I know not who, one morning presented himself to Napoleon, infull dress and freshly shaven. Seeing him thus, in the midst of thegeneral demoralization, as elaborately attired as if for parade, theEmperor said: _My general, you are a brave man!_

* * * * *

Again, the plain duty is the near duty. A very common weakness keepsmany people from finding what is near them interesting; they see thatonly on its paltry side. The distant, on the contrary, draws andfascinates them. In this way a fabulous amount of good-will is wasted. People burn with ardor for humanity, for the public good, for rightingdistant wrongs; they walk through life, their eyes fixed on marveloussights along the horizon, treading meanwhile on the feet of passers-by, or jostling them without being aware of their existence. 

Strange infirmity, that keeps us from seeing our fellows at our verydoors! People widely read and far-travelled are often not acquaintedwith their fellow-citizens, great or small. Their lives depend upon thecoöperation of a multitude of beings whose lot remains to them quiteindifferent. Not those to whom they owe their knowledge and culture, nottheir rulers, nor those who serve them and supply their needs, have everattracted their attention. That there is ingratitude or improvidence innot knowing one's workmen, one's servants, all those in short with whomone has indispensable social relations--this has never come into theirminds. Others go much farther. To certain wives, their husbands arestrangers, and conversely. There are parents who do not know theirchildren: their development, their thoughts, the dangers they run, thehopes they cherish, are to them a closed book. Many children do not knowtheir parents, have no suspicion of their difficulties and struggles, noconception of their aims. And I am not speaking of those piteouslydisordered homes where all the relations are false, but of honorablefamilies. Only, all these people are greatly preoccupied: each has hisoutside interest that fills all his time. The distant duty--veryattractive, I don't deny--claims them entirely, and they are notconscious of the duty near at hand. I fear they will have their troublefor their pains. Each person's base of operations is the field of hisimmediate duty. Neglect this field, and all you undertake at a distanceis compromised. First, then, be of your own country, your own city, yourown home, your own church, your own work-shop; then, if you can, set outfrom this to go beyond it. That is the plain and natural order, and aman must fortify himself with very bad reasons to arrive at reversingit. At all events, the result of so strange a confusion of duties isthat many people employ their time in all sorts of affairs except thosein which we have a right to demand it. Each is occupied with somethingelse than what concerns him, is absent from his post, ignores his trade. This is what complicates life. And it would be so simple for each one tobe about his own matter. 

* * * * *

Another form of simple duty. When damage is done, who should repair it?He who did it. This is just, but it is only theory, and the consequenceof following the theory would be the evil in force until the malefactorswere found and had offset it. But suppose they are not found? or supposethey can not or will not make amends?

The rain falls on your head through a hole in the roof, or the windblows in at a broken window. Will you wait to find the man who causedthe mischief? You would certainly think that absurd. And yet such isoften the practice. Children indignantly protest, "I didn't put itthere, and I shall not take it away!" And most men reason after the samefashion. It is logic. But it is not the kind of logic that makes theworld move forward. 

On the contrary, what we must learn, and what life repeats to us daily, is that the injury done by one must be repaired by another. One tearsdown, another builds up; one defaces, another restores; one stirs upquarrels, another appeases them; one makes tears to flow, another wipesthem away; one lives for evil-doing, another dies for the right. And inthe workings of this grievous law lies salvation. This also is logic, but a logic of facts which makes the logic of theories pale. Theconclusion of the matter is not doubtful; a single-hearted man draws itthus: given the evil, the great thing is to make it good, and to setabout it on the spot; well indeed if Messrs. The Malefactors willcontribute to the reparation; but experience warns us not to count toomuch on their aid. 

* * * * *

But however simple duty may be, there is still need of strength to doit. In what does this strength consist, or where is it found? One couldscarcely tire of asking. Duty is for man an enemy and an intruder, solong as it appears as an appeal from without. When it comes in throughthe door, he leaves by the window; when it blocks up the windows, heescapes by the roof. The more plainly we see it coming, the more surelywe flee. It is like those police, representatives of public order andofficial justice, whom an adroit thief succeeds in evading. Alas! theofficer, though he finally collar the thief, can only conduct him to thestation, not along the right road. Before man is able to accomplish hisduty, he must fall into the hands of another power than that which says, "Do this, do that; shun this, shun that, or else beware!"

This is an interior power; it is love. When a man hates his work, orgoes about it with indifference, all the forces of earth cannot makehim follow it with enthusiasm. But he who loves his office moves ofhimself; not only is it needless to compel him, but it would beimpossible to turn him aside. And this is true of everybody. The greatthing is to have felt the sanctity and immortal beauty in our obscuredestiny; to have been led by a series of experiences to love this lifefor its griefs and its hopes, to love men for their weakness and theirgreatness, and to belong to humanity through the heart, the intelligenceand the soul. Then an unknown power takes possession of us, as the windof the sails of a ship, and bears us toward pity and justice. Andyielding to its irresistible impulse, we say: _I cannot help it, something is there stronger than I. _ In so saying, the men of all timesand places have designated a power that is above humanity, but which maydwell in men's hearts. And everything truly lofty within us appears tous as a manifestation of this mystery beyond. Noble feelings, like greatthoughts and deeds, are things of inspiration. When the tree buds andbears fruit, it is because it draws vital forces from the soil, andreceives light and warmth from the sun. If a man, in his humble sphere, in the midst of the ignorance and faults that are his inevitably, consecrates himself sincerely to his task, it is because he is incontact with the eternal source of goodness. This central forcemanifests itself under a thousand forms. Sometimes it is indomitableenergy; sometimes winning tenderness; sometimes the militant spirit thatgrasps and uproots the evil; sometimes maternal solicitude, gathering toits arms from the wayside where it was perishing, some bruised andforgotten life; sometimes the humble patience of long research. All thatit touches bears its seal, and the men it inspires know that through itwe live and have our being. To serve it is their pleasure and reward. They are satisfied to be its instruments, and they no longer look at theoutward glory of their office, well knowing that nothing is great, nothing small, but that our life and our deeds are only of worth becauseof the spirit which breathes through them. 

VI

SIMPLE NEEDS

When we buy a bird of the fancier, the good man tells us briefly what isnecessary for our new pensioner, and the whole thing--hygiene, food, andthe rest--is comprehended in a dozen words. Likewise, to sum up thenecessities of most men, a few concise lines would answer. Their régimeis in general of supreme simplicity, and so long as they follow it, allis well with them, as with every obedient child of Mother Nature. Letthem depart from it, complications arise, health fails, gayety vanishes. Only simple and natural living can keep a body in full vigor. Instead ofremembering this basic principle, we fall into the strangestaberrations. 

What material things does a man need to live under the best conditions?A healthful diet, simple clothing, a sanitary dwelling-place, air andexercise. I am not going to enter into hygienic details, compose menus, or discuss model tenements and dress reform. My aim is to point out adirection and tell what advantage would come to each of us from orderinghis life in a spirit of simplicity. To know that this spirit does notrule in our society we need but watch the lives of men of all classes. Ask different people, of very unlike surroundings, this question: Whatdo you need to live? You will see how they respond. Nothing is moreinstructive. For some aboriginals of the Parisian asphalt, there is nolife possible outside a region bounded by certain boulevards. There onefinds the respirable air, the illuminating light, normal heat, classiccookery, and, in moderation, so many other things without which it wouldnot be worth the while to promenade this round ball. 

On the various rungs of the bourgeois ladder people reply to thequestion, what is necessary to live? by figures varying with the degreeof their ambition or education: and by education is oftenest understoodthe outward customs of life, the style of house, dress, table--aneducation precisely skin-deep. Upward from a certain income, fee, orsalary, life becomes possible: below that it is impossible. We have seenmen commit suicide because their means had fallen under a certainminimum. They preferred to disappear rather than retrench. Observe thatthis minimum, the cause of their despair, would have been sufficient forothers of less exacting needs, and enviable to men whose tastes aremodest. 

On lofty mountains vegetation changes with the altitude. There is theregion of ordinary flora, that of the forests, that of pastures, that ofbare rocks and glaciers. Above a certain zone wheat is no longer found, but the vine still prospers. The oak ceases in the low regions, the pineflourishes at considerable heights. Human life, with its needs, remindsone of these phenomena of vegetation. 

At a certain altitude of fortune the financier thrives, the club-man, the society woman, all those in short for whom the strictly necessaryincludes a certain number of domestics and equipages, as well as severaltown and country houses. Further on flourishes the rich upper middleclass, with its own standards and life. In other regions we find men ofample, moderate, or small means, and very unlike exigencies. Then comethe people--artisans, day-laborers, peasants, in short, the masses, wholive dense and serried like the thick, sturdy growths on the summits ofthe mountains, where the larger vegetation can no longer findnourishment. In all these different regions of society men live, and nomatter in which particular regions they flourish, all are alike humanbeings, bearing the same mark. How strange that among fellows thereshould be such a prodigious difference in requirements! And here theanalogies of our comparison fail us. Plants and animals of the samefamilies have identical wants. In human life we observe quite thecontrary. What conclusion shall we draw from this, if not that with usthere is a considerable elasticity in the nature and number of needs?

Is it well, is it favorable to the development of the individual and hishappiness, and to the development and happiness of society, that manshould have a multitude of needs, and bend his energies to theirsatisfaction? Let us return for a moment to our comparison with inferiorbeings. Provided that their essential wants are satisfied, they livecontent. Is this true of men? No. In all classes of society we finddiscontent. I leave completely out of the question those who lack thenecessities of life. One cannot with justice count in the number ofmalcontents those from whom hunger, cold, and misery wring complaints. Iam considering now that multitude of people who live under conditions atleast supportable. Whence comes their heart-burning? Why is it found notonly among those of modest though sufficient means, but also undershades of ever-increasing refinement, all along the ascending scale, even to opulence and the summits of social place? They talk of thecontented middle classes. Who talk of them? People who, judging fromwithout, think that as soon as one begins to enjoy ease he ought to besatisfied. But the middle classes themselves--do they considerthemselves satisfied? Not the least in the world. If there are people atonce rich and content, be assured that they are content because theyknow how to be so, not because they are rich. An animal is satisfiedwhen it has eaten; it lies down and sleeps. A man also can lie down andsleep for a time, but it never lasts. When he becomes accustomed to thiscontentment, he tires of it and demands a greater. Man's appetite is notappeased by food; it increases with eating. This may seem absurd, but itis strictly true. 

And the fact that those who make the most outcry are almost always thosewho should find the best reasons for contentment, proves unquestionablythat happiness is not allied to the number of our needs and the zeal weput into their cultivation. It is for everyone's interest to let thistruth sink deep into his mind. If it does not, if he does not bydecisive action succeed in limiting his needs, he risks a descent, insensible and beyond retreat, along the declivity of desire. 

He who lives to eat, drink, sleep, dress, take his walk, --in short, pamper himself all that he can--be it the courtier basking in the sun, the drunken laborer, the commoner serving his belly, the woman absorbedin her toilettes, the profligate of low estate or high, or simply theordinary pleasure-lover, a "good fellow, " but too obedient to materialneeds--that man or woman is on the downward way of desire, and thedescent is fatal. Those who follow it obey the same laws as a body on aninclined plane. Dupes of an illusion forever repeated, they think: "Justa few steps more, the last, toward the thing down there that we covet;then we will halt. " But the velocity they gain sweeps them on, and thefurther they go the less able they are to resist it. 

Here is the secret of the unrest, the madness, of many of ourcontemporaries. Having condemned their will to the service of theirappetites, they suffer the penalty. They are delivered up to violentpassions which devour their flesh, crush their bones, suck their blood, and cannot be sated. This is not a lofty moral denunciation. I havebeen listening to what life says, and have recorded, as I heard them, some of the truths that resound in every square. 

Has drunkenness, inventive as it is of new drinks, found the means ofquenching thirst? Not at all. It might rather be called the art ofmaking thirst inextinguishable. Frank libertinage, does it deaden thesting of the senses? No; it envenoms it, converts natural desire into amorbid obsession and makes it the dominant passion. Let your needs ruleyou, pamper them--you will see them multiply like insects in the sun. The more you give them, the more they demand. He is senseless who seeksfor happiness in material prosperity alone. As well undertake to fillthe cask of the Danaïdes. To those who have millions, millions arewanting; to those who have thousands, thousands. Others lack atwenty-franc piece or a hundred sous. When they have a chicken in thepot, they ask for a goose; when they have the goose, they wish it were aturkey, and so on. We shall never learn how fatal this tendency is. There are too many humble people who wish to imitate the great, too manypoor working-men who ape the well-to-do middle classes, too manyshop-girls who play at being ladies, too many clerks who act theclub-man or sportsman; and among those in easy circumstances and therich, are too many people who forget that what they possess could servea better purpose than procuring pleasure for themselves, only to find inthe end that one never has enough. Our needs, in place of the servantsthat they should be, have become a turbulent and seditious crowd, alegion of tyrants in miniature. A man enslaved to his needs may best becompared to a bear with a ring in its nose, that is led about and madeto dance at will. The likeness is not flattering, but you will grantthat it is true. It is in the train of their own needs that so many ofthose men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress, and I don'tknow what else. They cannot take a step without asking themselves if itmight not irritate their masters. How many men and women have gone onand on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too manyneeds and could not resign themselves to simple living. There are manyguests in the chambers of Mazas who could give us much light on thesubject of too exigent needs. 

Let me tell you the story of an excellent man whom I knew. He tenderlyloved his wife and children, and they all lived together, in France, incomfort and plenty, but with little of the luxury the wife coveted. Always short of money, though with a little management he might havebeen at ease, he ended by exiling himself to a distant colony, leavinghis wife and children in the mother country. I don't know how the poorman can feel off there; but his family has a finer apartment, morebeautiful toilettes, and what passes for an equipage. At present theyare perfectly contented, but soon they will be used to thisluxury--rudimentary after all. Then Madam will find her furniture commonand her equipage mean. If this man loves his wife--and that cannot bedoubted--he will migrate to the moon if there is hope of a largerstipend. In other cases the rôles are reversed, and the wife andchildren are sacrificed to the ravenous needs of the head of the family, whom an irregular life, play, and countless other costly follies haverobbed of all dignity. Between his appetites and his rôle of father hehas decided for the former, and he slowly drifts toward the most abjectegoism. 

This forgetfulness of all responsibility, this gradual benumbing ofnoble feeling, is not alone to be found among pleasure-seekers of theupper classes: the people also are infected. I know more than one littlehousehold, which ought to be happy, where the mother has only pain andheartache day and night, the children are barefoot, and there is greatado for bread. Why? Because too much money is needed by the father. Tospeak only of the expenditure for alcohol, everybody knows theproportions that has reached in the last twenty years. The sumsswallowed up in this gulf are fabulous--twice the indemnity of the warof 1870. How many legitimate needs could have been satisfied with thatwhich has been thrown away on these artificial ones! The reign of wantsis by no means the reign of brotherhood. The more things a man desiresfor himself, the less he can do for his neighbor, and even for thoseattached to him by ties of blood. 

* * * * *

The destruction of happiness, independence, moral fineness, even of thesentiment of common interests--such is the result of the reign of needs. A multitude of other unfortunate things might be added, of which not theleast is the disturbance of the public welfare. When society has toogreat needs, it is absorbed with the present, sacrifices to it theconquests of the past, immolates to it the future. After us the deluge!To raze the forests in order to get gold; to squander your patrimony inyouth, destroying in a day the fruit of long years; to warm your houseby burning your furniture; to burden the future with debts for the sakeof present pleasure; to live by expedients and sow for the morrowtrouble, sickness, ruin, envy and hate--the enumeration of all themisdeeds of this fatal régime has no end. 

On the other hand, if we hold to simple needs we avoid all these evilsand replace them by measureless good. That temperance and sobriety arethe best guardians of health is an old story. They spare him whoobserves them many a misery that saddens existence; they insure himhealth, love of action, mental poise. Whether it be a question of food, dress, or dwelling, simplicity of taste is also a source of independenceand safety. The more simply you live, the more secure is your future;you are less at the mercy of surprises and reverses. An illness or aperiod of idleness does not suffice to dispossess you: a change ofposition, even considerable, does not put you to confusion. Havingsimple needs, you find it less painful to accustom yourself to thehazards of fortune. You remain a man, though you lose your office oryour income, because the foundation on which your life rests is not yourtable, your cellar, your horses, your goods and chattels, or your money. In adversity you will not act like a nursling deprived of its bottle andrattle. Stronger, better armed for the struggle, presenting, like thosewith shaven heads, less advantage to the hands of your enemy, you willalso be of more profit to your neighbor. For you will not rouse hisjealousy, his base desires or his censure, by your luxury, yourprodigality, or the spectacle of a sycophant's life; and, less absorbedin your own comfort, you will find the means of working for that ofothers. 

VII

SIMPLE PLEASURES

Do you find life amusing in these days? For my part, on the whole, itseems rather depressing, and I fear that my opinion is not altogetherpersonal. As I observe the lives of my contemporaries, and listen totheir talk, I find myself unhappily confirmed in the opinion that theydo not get much pleasure out of things. And certainly it is not fromlack of trying; but it must be acknowledged that their success ismeagre. Where can the fault be?

Some accuse politics or business; others social problems or militarism. We meet only an embarrassment of choice when we start to unstring thechaplet of our carking cares. Suppose we set out in pursuit of pleasure. There is too much pepper in our soup to make it palatable. Our arms arefilled with a multitude of embarrassments, any one of which would beenough to spoil our temper. From morning till night, wherever we go, thepeople we meet are hurried, worried, preoccupied. Some have spilt theirgood blood in the miserable conflicts of petty politics: others aredisheartened by the meanness and jealousy they have encountered in theworld of literature or art. Commercial competition troubles the sleep ofnot a few. The crowded curricula of study and the exigencies of theiropening careers, spoil life for young men. The working classes sufferthe consequences of a ceaseless industrial struggle. It is becomingdisagreeable to govern, because authority is diminishing; to teach, because respect is vanishing. Wherever one turns there is matter fordiscontent. 

And yet history shows us certain epochs of upheaval which were aslacking in idyllic tranquillity as is our own, but which the gravestevents did not prevent from being gay. It even seems as if theseriousness of affairs, the uncertainty of the morrow, the violence ofsocial convulsions, sometimes became a new source of vitality. It is nota rare thing to hear soldiers singing between two battles, and I thinkmyself nowise mistaken in saying that human joy has celebrated itsfinest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance. But to sleeppeacefully on the eve of battle or to exult at the stake, men had thenthe stimulus of an internal harmony which we perhaps lack. Joy is not inthings, it is in us, and I hold to the belief that the causes of ourpresent unrest, of this contagious discontent spreading everywhere, arein us at least as much as in exterior conditions. 

To give one's self up heartily to diversion one must feel himself on asolid basis, must believe in life and find it within him. And here liesour weakness. So many of us--even, alas! the younger men--are atvariance with life; and I do not speak of philosophers only. How do youthink a man can be amused while he has his doubts whether after all lifeis worth living? Besides this, one observes a disquieting depression ofvital force, which must be attributed to the abuse man makes of hissensations. Excess of all kinds has blurred our senses and poisoned ourfaculty for happiness. Human nature succumbs under the irregularitiesimposed upon it. Deeply attainted at its root, the desire to live, persistent in spite of everything, seeks satisfaction in cheats andbaubles. In medical science we have recourse to artificial respiration, artificial alimentation, and galvanism. So, too, around expiringpleasure we see a crowd of its votaries, exerting themselves to reawakenit, to reanimate it Most ingenious means have been invented; it cannever be said that expense has been spared. Everything has been tried, the possible and the impossible. But in all these complicated alembicsno one has ever arrived at distilling a drop of veritable joy. We mustnot confound pleasure with the instruments of pleasure. To be a painter, does it suffice to arm one's self with a brush, or does the purchase atgreat cost of a Stradivarius make one a musician? No more, if you hadthe whole paraphernalia of amusement in the perfection of itsingenuity, would it advance you upon your road. But with a bit ofcrayon a great artist makes an immortal sketch. It needs talent orgenius to paint; and to amuse one's self, the faculty of being happy:whoever possesses it is amused at slight cost. This faculty is destroyedby scepticism, artificial living, over-abuse; it is fostered byconfidence, moderation and normal habits of thought and action. 

An excellent proof of my proposition, and one very easily encountered, lies in the fact that wherever life is simple and sane, true pleasureaccompanies it as fragrance does uncultivated flowers. Be this lifehard, hampered, devoid of all things ordinarily considered as the veryconditions of pleasure, the rare and delicate plant, joy, flourishesthere. It springs up between the flags of the pavement, on an arid wall, in the fissure of a rock. We ask ourselves how it comes, and whence: butit lives; while in the soft warmth of conservatories or in fields richlyfertilized you cultivate it at a golden cost to see it fade and die inyour hand. 

Ask actors what audience is happiest at the play; they will tell you thepopular one. The reason is not hard to grasp. To these people the playis an exception, they are not bored by it from over-indulgence. And, too, to them it is a rest from rude toil. The pleasure they enjoy theyhave honestly earned, and they know its cost as they know that of eachsou earned by the sweat of their labor. More, they have not frequentedthe wings, they have no intrigues with the actresses, they do not seethe wires pulled. To them it is all real. And so they feel pleasureunalloyed. I think I see the sated sceptic, whose monocle glistens inthat box, cast a disdainful glance over the smiling crowd. 

"Poor stupid creatures, ignorant and gross!"

And yet they are the true livers, while he is an artificial product, amannikin, incapable of experiencing this fine and salutary intoxicationof an hour of frank pleasure. 

Unhappily, ingenuousness is disappearing, even in the rural districts. We see the people of our cities, and those of the country in their turn, breaking with the good traditions. The mind, warped by alcohol, by thepassion for gambling, and by unhealthy literature, contracts little bylittle perverted tastes. Artificial life makes irruption intocommunities once simple in their pleasures, and it is like phylloxera tothe vine. The robust tree of rustic joy finds its sap drained, itsleaves turning yellow. 

Compare a _fête champêtre_ of the good old style with the villagefestivals, so-called, of to-day. In the one case, in the honored settingof antique costumes, genuine countrymen sing the folk songs, dancerustic dances, regale themselves with native drinks, and seem entirelyin their element. They take their pleasure as the blacksmith forges, asthe cascade tumbles over the rocks, as the colts frisk in the meadows. It is contagious: it stirs your heart. In spite of yourself you areready to cry: "Bravo, my children. That is fine!" You want to join in. In the other case, you see villagers disguised as city folk, countrywomen made hideous by the modiste, and, as the chief ornament ofthe festival, a lot of degenerates who bawl the songs of music halls;and sometimes in the place of honor, a group of tenth-rate barnstormers, imported for the occasion, to civilize these rustics and give them ataste of refined pleasures. For drinks, liquors mixed with brandy orabsinthe: in the whole thing neither originality nor picturesqueness. License, indeed, and clownishness, but not that _abandon_ whichingenuous joy brings in its train. 

* * * * *

This question of pleasure is capital. Staid people generally neglect itas a frivolity; utilitarians, as a costly superfluity. Those whom wedesignate as pleasure-seekers forage in this delicate domain like wildboars in a garden. No one seems to doubt the immense human interestattached to joy. It is a sacred flame that must be fed, and that throwsa splendid radiance over life. He who takes pains to foster itaccomplishes a work as profitable for humanity as he who builds bridges, pierces tunnels, or cultivates the ground. So to order one's life as tokeep, amid toils and suffering, the faculty of happiness, and be able topropagate it in a sort of salutary contagion among one's fellow-men, isto do a work of fraternity in the noblest sense. To give a triflingpleasure, smooth an anxious brow, bring a little light into darkpaths--what a truly divine office in the midst of this poor humanity!But it is only in great simplicity of heart that one succeeds infilling it. 

We are not simple enough to be happy and to render others so. We lackthe singleness of heart and the self-forgetfulness. We spread joy, as wedo consolation, by such methods as to obtain negative results. Toconsole a person, what do we do? We set to work to dispute hissuffering, persuade him that he is mistaken in thinking himself unhappy. In reality, our language translated into truthful speech would amount tothis: "You suffer, my friend? That is strange; you must be mistaken, forI feel nothing. " As the only human means of soothing grief is to shareit in the heart, how must a sufferer feel, consoled in this fashion?

To divert our neighbor, make him pass an agreeable hour, we set out inthe same way. We invite him to admire our versatility, to laugh at ourwit, to frequent our house, to sit at our table; through it all, ourdesire to shine breaks forth. Sometimes, also, with a patron'sprodigality, we offer him the beneficence of a public entertainment ofour own choosing, unless we ask him to find amusement at our home, as wesometimes do to make up a party at cards, with the _arrière-pensée_ ofexploiting him to our own profit. Do you think it the height ofpleasure for others to admire us, to admit our superiority, and to actas our tools? Is there anything in the world so disgusting as to feelone's self patronized, made capital of, enrolled in a claque? To givepleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removingthe ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as thediversions last. There is no worse kill-joy than the ego. We must begood children, sweet and kind, button our coats over our medals andtitles, and with our whole heart put ourselves at the disposal ofothers. 

Let us sometimes live--be it only for an hour, and though we must layall else aside--to make others smile. The sacrifice is only inappearance; no one finds more pleasure for himself than he who knowshow, without ostentation, to give himself that he may procure for thosearound him a moment of forgetfulness and happiness. 

When shall we be so simply and truly _men_ as not to obtrude ourpersonal business and distresses upon the people we meet socially? Maywe not forget for an hour our pretensions, our strife, our distributionsinto sets and cliques--in short, our "parts, " and become as childrenonce more, to laugh again that good laugh which does so much to make theworld better?

* * * * *

Here I feel drawn to speak of something very particular, and in so doingto offer my well-disposed readers an opportunity to go about a splendidbusiness. I want to call their attention to several classes of peopleseldom thought of with reference to their pleasures. 

It is understood that a broom serves only to sweep, a watering-pot towater plants, a coffee-mill to grind coffee, and likewise it is supposedthat a nurse is designed only to care for the sick, a professor toteach, a priest to preach, bury, and confess, a sentinel to mount guard;and the conclusion is drawn that the people given up to the more seriousbusiness of life are dedicated to labor, like the ox. Amusement isincompatible with their activities. Pushing this view still further, wethink ourselves warranted in believing that the infirm, the afflicted, the bankrupt, the vanquished in life's battle, and all those who carryheavy burdens, are in the shade, like the northern slopes of mountains, and that it is so of necessity. Whence the conclusion that seriouspeople have no need of pleasure, and that to offer it to them would beunseemly; while as to the afflicted, there would be a lack of delicacyin breaking the thread of their sad meditations. It seems therefore tobe understood that certain persons are condemned to be _always_ serious, that we should approach them in a serious frame of mind, and talk tothem only of serious things: so, too, when we visit the sick orunfortunate; we should leave our smiles at the door, compose our faceand manner to dolefulness, and talk of anything heartrending. Thus wecarry darkness to those in darkness, shade to those in shade. Weincrease the isolation of solitary lives and the monotony of the dulland sad. We wall up some existences as it were in dungeons; and becausethe grass grows round their deserted prison-house, we speak low inapproaching it, as though it were a tomb. Who suspects the work ofinfernal cruelty which is thus accomplished every day in the world! Thisought not to be. 

When you find men or women whose lives are lost in hard tasks, or in thepainful office of seeking out human wretchedness and binding up wounds, remember that they are beings made like you, that they have the samewants, that there are hours when they need pleasure and diversion. Youwill not turn them aside from their mission by making them laughoccasionally--these people who see so many tears and griefs; on thecontrary, you will give them strength to go on the better with theirwork. 

And when people whom you know are in trial, do not draw a sanitarycordon round them--as though they had the plague--that you cross onlywith precautions which recall to them their sad lot. On the contrary, after showing all your sympathy, all your respect for their grief, comfort them, help them to take up life again; carry them a breath fromthe out-of-doors--something in short to remind them that theirmisfortune does not shut them off from the world. 

And so extend your sympathy to those whose work quite absorbs them, whoare, so to put it, tied down. The world is full of men and womensacrificed to others, who never have either rest or pleasure, and towhom the least relaxation, the slightest respite, is a priceless good. And this minimum of comfort could be so easily found for them if onlywe thought of it. But the broom, you know, is made for sweeping, and itseems as though it could not be fatigued. Let us rid ourselves of thiscriminal blindness which prevents us from seeing the exhaustion of thosewho are always in the breach. Relieve the sentinels perishing at theirposts, give Sisyphus an hour to breathe; take for a moment the place ofthe mother, a slave to the cares of her house and her children;sacrifice an hour of our sleep for someone worn by long vigils with thesick. Young girl, tired sometimes perhaps of your walk with yourgoverness, take the cook's apron, and give her the key to the fields. You will at once make others happy and be happy yourself. We gounconcernedly along beside our brothers who are bent under burdens wemight take upon ourselves for a minute. And this short respite wouldsuffice to soothe aches, revive the flame of joy in many a heart, andopen up a wide place for brotherliness. How much better would oneunderstand another if he knew how to put himself heartily in thatother's place, and how much more pleasure there would be in life!

* * * * *

I have spoken too fully elsewhere of systematizing amusements for theyoung, to return to it here in detail. [B] But I wish to say in substancewhat cannot be too often repeated: If you wish youth to be moral, do notneglect its pleasures, or leave to chance the task of providing them. You will perhaps say that young people do not like to have theiramusements submitted to regulations, and that besides, in our day, theyare already over-spoiled and divert themselves only too much. I shallreply, first, that one may suggest ideas, indicate directions, offeropportunities for amusement, without making any regulations whatever. Inthe second place, I shall make you see that you deceive yourselves inthinking youth has too much diversion. Aside from amusements that areartificial, enervating and immoral, that blight life instead of makingit bloom in splendor, there are very few left to-day. Abuse, that enemyof legitimate use, has so befouled the world, that it is becomingdifficult to touch anything but what is unclean: whence watchfulness, warnings and endless prohibitions. One can hardly stir withoutencountering something that resembles unhealthy pleasure. Among youngpeople of to-day, particularly the self-respecting, the dearth ofamusements causes real suffering. One is not weaned from this generouswine without discomfort. Impossible to prolong this state of affairswithout deepening the shadow round the heads of the younger generations. We must come to their aid. Our children are heirs of a joyless world. Webequeath them cares, hard questions, a life heavy with shackles andcomplexities. Let us at least make an effort to brighten the morning oftheir days. Let us interest ourselves in their sports, find thempleasure-grounds, open to them our hearts and our homes. Let us bringthe family into our amusements. Let gayety cease to be a commodity ofexport. Let us call in our sons, whom our gloomy interiors send out intothe street, and our daughters, moping in dismal solitude. Let usmultiply anniversaries, family parties, and excursions. Let us raisegood humor in our homes to the height of an institution. Let theschools, too, do their part. Let masters and students--school-boys andcollege-boys--meet together oftener for amusement. It will be so muchthe better for serious work. There is no such aid to understanding one'sprofessor as to have laughed in his company; and conversely, to be wellunderstood a pupil must be met elsewhere than in class or examination. 

And who will furnish the money? What a question! That is exactly theerror. Pleasure and money: people take them for the two wings of thesame bird! A gross illusion! Pleasure, like all other truly preciousthings in this world, cannot be bought or sold. If you wish to beamused, you must do your part toward it; that is the essential. There isno prohibition against opening your purse, if you can do it, and find itdesirable. But I assure you it is not indispensable. Pleasure andsimplicity are two old acquaintances. Entertain simply, meet yourfriends simply. If you come from work well done, are as amiable andgenuine as possible toward your companions, and speak no evil of theabsent, your success is sure. 

[B] See "Youth, " the chapter on "Joy. "

VIII

THE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY

We have in passing touched upon a certain wide-spread prejudice whichattributes to money a magic power. Having come so near enchanted groundwe will not retire in awe, but plant a firm foot here, persuaded of manytruths that should be spoken. They are not new, but how they areforgotten!

I see no possible way of doing without money. The only thing thattheorists or legislators who accuse it of all our ills have hithertoachieved, has been to change its name or form. But they have never beenable to dispense with a symbol representative of the commercial value ofthings. One might as well wish to do away with written language as to doaway with money. Nevertheless, this question of a circulating medium isvery troublesome. It forms one of the chief elements of complication inour life. The economic difficulties amid which we still flounder, socialconventionalities, and the entire organization of modern life, havecarried gold to a rank so eminent that it is not astonishing to find theimagination of man attributing to it a sort of royalty. And it is onthis side that we shall attack the problem. 

The term money has for appendage that of merchandise. If there were nomerchandise there would be no money; but as long as there is merchandisethere will be money, little matter under what form. The source of allthe abuses which centre around money lies in a lack of discrimination. People have confused under the term and idea of merchandise, thingswhich have no relation with one another. They have attempted to give avenal value to things which neither could have it nor ought to. The ideaof purchase and sale has invaded ground where it may justly beconsidered an enemy and a usurper. It is reasonable that wheat, potatoes, wine, fabrics, should be bought and sold, and it is perfectlynatural that a man's labor procure him rights to life, and that there beput into his hands something whose value represents them; but herealready the analogy ceases to be complete. A man's labor is notmerchandise in the same sense as a sack of flour or a ton of coal. Intothis labor enter elements which cannot be valued in money. In short, there are things which can in no wise be bought: sleep, for instance, knowledge of the future, talent. He who offers them for sale must beconsidered a fool or an impostor. And yet there are gentlemen who coinmoney by such traffic. They sell what does not belong to them, andtheir dupes pay fictitious values in veritable coin. So, too, there aredealers in pleasure, dealers in love, dealers in miracles, dealers inpatriotism, and the title of merchant, so honorable when it represents aman selling that which is in truth a commodity of trade, becomes theworst of stigmas when there is question of the heart, of religion, ofcountry. 

Almost all men are agreed that to barter with one's sentiments, hishonor, his cloth, his pen, or his note, is infamous. Unfortunately thisidea, which suffers no contradiction as a theory, and which thus statedseems rather a commonplace than a high moral truth, has infinite troubleto make its way in practice. Traffic has invaded the world. Themoney-changers are established even in the sanctuary, and by sanctuary Ido not mean religious things alone, but whatever mankind holds sacredand inviolable. It is not gold that complicates, corrupts, and debaseslife; it is our mercenary spirit. 

The mercenary spirit resolves everything into a single question: _Howmuch is that going to bring me?_ and sums up everything in a singleaxiom: _With money you can procure anything. _ Following these twoprinciples of conduct, a society may descend to a degree of infamyimpossible to describe or to imagine. 

_How much is it going to bring me?_ This question, so legitimate whileit concerns those precautions which each ought to take to assure hissubsistence by his labor, becomes pernicious as soon as it passes itslimits and dominates the whole life. This is so true that it vitiateseven the toil which gains our daily bread. I furnish paid labor; nothingcould be better: but if to inspire me in this labor I have only thedesire to get the pay, nothing could be worse. A man whose only motivefor action is his wages, does a bad piece of work: what interests him isnot the doing, it's the gold. If he can retrench in pains withoutlessening his gains, be assured that he will do it. Plowman, mason, factory laborer, he who loves not his work puts into it neither interestnor dignity--is, in short, a bad workman. It is not well to confideone's life to a doctor who is wholly engrossed in his fees, for thespring of his action is the desire to garnish his purse with thecontents of yours. If it is for his interest that you should sufferlonger, he is capable of fostering your malady instead of fortifyingyour strength. The instructor of children who cares for his work only sofar as it brings him profit, is a sad teacher; for his pay isindifferent, and his teaching more indifferent still. Of what value isthe mercenary journalist? The day you write for the dollar, your proseis not worth the dollar you write for. The more elevated in kind is theobject of human labor, the more the mercenary spirit, if it be present, makes this labor void and corrupts it. There are a thousand reasons tosay that all toil merits its wage, that every man who devotes hisenergies to providing for his life should have his place in the sun, andthat he who does nothing useful, does not gain his livelihood, in short, is only a parasite. But there is no greater social error than to makegain the sole motive of action. The best we put into our work--be thatwork done by strength of muscle, warmth of heart, or concentration ofmind--is precisely that for which no one can pay us. Nothing betterproves that man is not a machine than this fact: two men at work withthe same forces and the same movements, produce totally differentresults. Where lies the cause of this phenomenon? In the divergence oftheir intentions. One has the mercenary spirit, the other has singlenessof purpose. Both receive their pay, but the labor of the one is barren;the other has put his soul into his work. The work of the first is likea grain of sand, out of which nothing comes through all eternity; theother's work is like the living seed thrown into the ground; itgerminates and brings forth harvests. This is the secret which explainswhy so many people have failed while employing the very processes bywhich others succeed. Automatons do not reproduce their kind, andmercenary labor yields no fruit. 

* * * * *

Unquestionably we must bow before economic facts, and recognize thedifficulties of living: from day to day it becomes more imperative tocombine well one's forces in order to succeed in feeding, clothing, housing, and bringing up a family. He who does not rightly take accountof these crying necessities, who makes no calculation, no provision forthe future, is but a visionary or an incompetent, and runs the risk ofsooner or later asking alms from those at whose parsimony he hassneered. And yet, what would become of us if these cares absorbed usentirely? if, mere accountants, we should wish to measure our effort bythe money it brings, do nothing that does not end in a receipt, andconsider as things worthless or pains lost whatever cannot be drawn upin figures on the pages of a ledger? Did our mothers look for pay inloving us and caring for us? What would become of filial piety if weasked it for loving and caring for our aged parents?

What does it cost you to speak the truth? Misunderstandings, sometimessufferings and persecutions. To defend your country? Weariness, woundsand often death. To do good? Annoyance, ingratitude, even resentment. Self-sacrifice enters into all the essential actions of humanity. I defythe closest calculators to maintain their position in the world withoutever appealing to aught but their calculations. True, those who know howto make their "pile" are rated as men of ability. But look a littlecloser. How much of it do they owe to the unselfishness of thesimple-hearted? Would they have succeeded had they met only shrewd menof their own sort, having for device: "No money, no service?" Let us beoutspoken; it is due to certain people who do not count too rigorously, that the world gets on. The most beautiful acts of service and thehardest tasks have generally little remuneration or none. Fortunatelythere are always men ready for unselfish deeds; and even for those paidonly in suffering, though they cost gold, peace, and even life. The partthese men play is often painful and discouraging. Who of us has notheard recitals of experiences wherein the narrator regretted some pastkindness he had done, some trouble he had taken, to have nothing butvexation in return? These confidences generally end thus: "It was follyto do the thing!" Sometimes it is right so to judge; for it is always amistake to cast pearls before swine; but how many lives there are whosesole acts of real beauty are these very ones of which the doers repentbecause of men's ingratitude! Our wish for humanity is that the numberof these foolish deeds may go on increasing. 

* * * * *

And now I arrive at the _credo_ of the mercenary spirit. It ischaracterized by brevity. For the mercenary man, the law and theprophets are contained in this one axiom: _With money you can getanything. _ From a surface view of our social life, nothing seems moreevident. "The sinews of war, " "the shining mark, " "the key that opensall doors, " "king money!"--If one gathered up all the sayings about theglory and power of gold, he could make a litany longer than that whichis chanted in honor of the Virgin. You must be without a penny, if onlyfor a day or two, and try to live in this world of ours, to have anyidea of the needs of him whose purse is empty. I invite those who lovecontrasts and unforeseen situations, to attempt to live without moneythree days, and far from their friends and acquaintances--in short, farfrom the society in which they are somebody. They will gain moreexperience in forty-eight hours than in a year otherwise. Alas for somepeople! they have this experience thrust upon them, and when veritableruin descends around their heads, it is useless to remain in their owncountry, among the companions of their youth, their former colleagues, even those indebted to them. People affect to know them no longer. Withwhat bitterness do they comment on the creed of money:--With gold onemay have what he will; without it, impossible to have anything! Theybecome pariahs, lepers, whom everyone shuns. Flies swarm round cadavers, men round gold. Take away the gold, nobody is there. Oh, it has causedtears to flow, this creed of gain! bitter tears, tears of blood, evenfrom those very eyes which once adored the golden calf. 

And with it all, this creed is false, quite false. I shall not advanceto the attack with hackneyed tales of the rich man astray in a desert, who cannot get even a drop of water for his gold; or the decrepitmillionaire who would give half he has to buy from a stalwart fellowwithout a cent, his twenty years and his lusty health. No more shall Iattempt to prove that one cannot buy happiness. So many people who havemoney and so many more who have not would smile at this truth as thehardest ridden of saws. But I shall appeal to the common experience ofeach of you, to make you put your finger on the clumsy lie hiddenbeneath an axiom that all the world goes about repeating. 

Fill your purse to the best of your means, and let us set out for one ofthe watering-places of which there are so many. I mean some little townformerly unknown and full of simple folk, respectful and hospitable, among whom it was good to be, and cost little. Fame with her hundredtrumpets has announced them to the world, and shown them how they canprofit from their situation, their climate, their personality. You startout, on the faith of Dame Rumor, flattering yourself that with yourmoney you are going to find a quiet place to rest, and, far from theworld of civilization and convention, weave a bit of poetry into thewarp of your days. 

The beginning is good. Nature's setting and some patriarchal costumes, slow to disappear, delight you. But as time passes, the impression isspoiled. The reverse side of things begins to show. This which youthought was as true antique as family heirlooms, is naught but trickeryto mystify the credulous. Everything is labeled, all is for sale, fromthe earth to the inhabitants. These primitives have become the mostconsummate of sharpers. Given your money, they have resolved the problemof getting it with the least expense to themselves. On all sides arenets and traps, like spider-webs, and the fly that this gentry liessnugly in wait for is _you_. This is what twenty or thirty years ofvenality has done for a population once simple and honest, whose contactwas grateful indeed to men worn by city life. Home-made bread hasdisappeared, butter comes from the dealer, they know to an art how toskim milk and adulterate wine; they have all the vices of dwellers incities without their virtues. 

As you leave, you count your money. So much is wanting, that you makecomplaint. You are wrong. One never pays too dear for the convictionthat there are things which money will not buy. 

You have need in your house of an intelligent and competent servant:attempt to find this _rara avis_. According to the principle that withmoney one may get anything, you ought, as the position you offer isinferior, ordinary, good, or exceptional, to find servants unskilled, average, excellent, superior. But all those who present themselves forthe vacant post are listed in the last category, and are fortified withcertificates to support their pretensions. It is true that nine timesout of ten, when put to the test, these experts are found totallywanting. Then why did they engage themselves with you? They ought intruth to reply as does the cook in the comedy, who is dearly paid andproves to know nothing. 

 "Why did you hire out as a _cordon bleu_? _It was to get bigger commissions. "_

That is the great affair. You will always find people who like to getbig wages. More rarely you find capability. And if you are looking forprobity, the difficulty increases. Mercenaries may be had for theasking; faithfulness is another thing. Far be it from me to deny theexistence of faithful servants, at once intelligent and upright. But youwill encounter as many, if not more, among the illy paid as among thosemost highly salaried. And it little matters where you find them, you maybe sure that they are not faithful in their own interest; they arefaithful because they have somewhat of that simplicity which renders uscapable of self-abnegation. 

We also hear on all sides the adage that money is the sinews of war. There is no question but that war costs much money, and we knowsomething about it. Does this mean that in order to defend herselfagainst her enemies and to honor her flag, a country need only be rich?In olden time the Greeks took it upon themselves to teach the Persiansthe contrary, and this lesson will never cease to be repeated inhistory. With money ships, cannon, horses may be bought; but not somilitary genius, administrative wisdom, discipline, enthusiasm. Putmillions into the hands of your recruiters, and charge them to bring youa great leader and an army. You will find a hundred captains instead ofone, and a thousand soldiers. But put them under fire: you will haveenough of your hirelings! At least one might imagine that with moneyalone it is possible to lighten misery. Ah! that too is an illusion fromwhich we must turn away. Money, be the sum great or small, is a seedwhich germinates into abuses. Unless there go with it intelligence, kindness, much knowledge of men, it will do nothing but harm, and we rungreat risk of corrupting both those who receive our bounty and thosecharged with its distribution. 

* * * * *

Money will not answer for everything: it is a power, but it is notall-powerful. Nothing complicates life, demoralizes man, perverts thenormal course of society like the development of venality. Wherever itreigns, everybody is duped by everybody else: one can no longer puttrust in persons or things, no longer obtain anything of value. We wouldnot be detractors of money, but this general law must be applied to it:_Everything in its own place. _ When gold, which should be a servant, becomes a tyrannical power, affronting morality, dignity and liberty;when some exert themselves to obtain it at any price, offering for salewhat is not merchandise, and others, possessing wealth, fancy that theycan purchase what no one may buy, it is time to rise against this grossand criminal superstition, and cry aloud to the imposture: "Thy moneyperish with thee!" The most precious things that man possesses he hasalmost always received gratuitously: let him learn so to give them. 

IX

NOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD

One of the chief puerilities of our time is the love of advertisement. To emerge from obscurity, to be in the public eye, to make one's selftalked of--some people are so consumed with this desire that we arejustified in declaring them attacked with an itch for publicity. Intheir eyes obscurity is the height of ignominy: so they do their best tokeep their names in every mouth. In their obscure position they lookupon themselves as lost, like ship-wrecked sailors whom a night oftempest has cast on some lonely rock, and who have recourse to cries, volleys, fire, all the signals imaginable, to let it be known that theyare there. Not content with setting off crackers and innocent rockets, many, to make themselves heard at any cost, have gone to the length ofperfidy and even crime. The incendiary Erostratus has made numerousdisciples. How many men of to-day have become notorious for havingdestroyed something of mark; pulled down--or tried to pull down--someman's high reputation; signalled their passage, in short, by a scandal, a meanness, or an atrocity!

This rage for notoriety does not surge through cracked brains alone, oronly in the world of adventurers, charlatans and pretenders generally;it has spread abroad in all the domains of life, spiritual and material. Politics, literature, even science, and--most odious ofall--philanthropy and religion are infected. Trumpets announce a gooddeed done, and souls must be saved with din and clamor. Pursuing its wayof destruction, the rage for noise has entered places ordinarily silent, troubled spirits naturally serene, and vitiated in large measure allactivity for good. The abuse of showing everything, or rather, puttingeverything on exhibition; the growing incapacity to appreciate thatwhich chooses to remain hidden, and the habit of estimating the value ofthings by the racket they make, have come to corrupt the judgment of themost earnest men, and one sometimes wonders if society will not end bytransforming itself into a great fair, with each one beating his drum infront of his tent. 

Gladly do we quit the dust and din of like exhibitions, to go andbreathe peacefully in some far-off nook of the woods, all surprise thatthe brook is so limpid, the forest so still, the solitude so enchanting. Thank God there are yet these uninvaded corners. However formidable theuproar, however deafening the babel of merry-andrews, it cannot carrybeyond a certain limit; it grows faint and dies away. The realm ofsilence is vaster than the realm of noise. Herein is our consolation. 

* * * * *

Rest a moment on the threshold of this infinite world of ingloriousgood, of quiet activities. Instantly we are under the charm we feel instretches of untrodden snow, in hiding wood-flowers, in disappearingpathways that seem to lead to horizons without bourn. The world is somade that the engines of labor, the most active agencies, are everywhereconcealed. Nature affects a sort of coquetry in masking her operations. It costs you pains to spy her out, ingenuity to surprise her, if youwould see anything but results and penetrate the secrets of herlaboratories. Likewise in human society, the forces which move for goodremain invisible, and even in our individual lives; what is best in usis incommunicable, buried in the depths of us. And the more vital arethese sensibilities and intuitions, confounding themselves with the verysource of our being, the less ostentatious they are: they thinkthemselves profaned by exposure to the light of day. There is a secretand inexpressible joy in possessing at the heart of one's being, aninterior world known only to God, whence, nevertheless, come impulses, enthusiasms, the daily renewal of courage, and the most powerful motivesfor activity among our fellow men. When this intimate life loses inintensity, when man neglects it for what is superficial, he forfeits inworth all that he gains in appearance. By a sad fatality, it happensthat in this way we often become less admirable in proportion as we aremore admired. And we remain convinced that what is best in the world isunknown there; for only those know it who possess it, and if they speakof it, in so doing they destroy its charm. 

There are passionate lovers of nature whom she fascinates most inby-places, in the cool of forests, in the clefts of cañons, everywherethat the careless lover is not admitted to her contemplation. Forgettingtime and the life of the world, they pass days in these inviolatestillnesses, watching a bird build its nest or brood over its young, orsome little groundling at its gracious play. So to seek the good withinhimself--one must go where he no longer finds constraint, or pose, or"gallery" of any sort, but the simple fact of a life made up of wishingto be what it is good for it to be, without troubling about anythingelse. 

May we be permitted to record here some observations made from life? Asno names are given, they cannot be considered indiscreet. 

In my country of Alsace, on the solitary route whose interminable ribbonstretches on and on under the forests of the Vosges, there is astone-breaker whom I have seen at his work for thirty years. The firsttime I came upon him, I was a young student, setting out with swellingheart for the great city. The sight of this man did me good, for he washumming a song as he broke his stones. We exchanged a few words, and hesaid at the end: "Well, good-by, my boy, good courage and good luck!"Since then I have passed and repassed along that same route, undercircumstances the most diverse, painful and joyful. The student hasfinished his course, the breaker of stones remains what he was. He hastaken a few more precautions against the seasons' storms: a rush-matprotects his back, and his felt hat is drawn further down to shield hisface. But the forest is always sending back the echo of his valianthammer. How many sudden tempests have broken over his bent back, howmuch adverse fate has fallen on his head, on his house, on his country!He continues to break his stones, and, coming and going I find him bythe roadside, smiling in spite of his age and his wrinkles, benevolent, speaking--above all in dark days--those simple words of brave men, whichhave so much effect when they are scanned to the breaking of stones. 

It would be quite impossible to express the emotion the sight of thissimple man gives me, and certainly he has no suspicion of it. I know ofnothing more reassuring and at the same time more searching for thevanity which ferments in our hearts, than this coming face to face withan obscure worker who does his task as the oak grows and as the good Godmakes his sun to rise, without asking who is looking on. 

I have known, too, a number of old teachers, men and women who havepassed their whole life at the same occupation--making the rudiments ofhuman knowledge and a few principles of conduct penetrate headssometimes harder than the rocks. They have done it with their wholesoul, throughout the length of a hard life in which the attention of menhad little place. When they lie in their unknown graves, no oneremembers them but a few humble people like themselves. But theirrecompense is in their love. No one is greater than these unknown. 

How many hidden virtues may one not discover--if he know how tosearch--among people of a class he often ridicules without perceivingthat in so doing he is guilty of cruelty, ingratitude and stupidity: Imean old maids. People amuse themselves with remarking the surprisingdress and ways of some of them--things of no consequence, for thatmatter. They persist also in reminding us that others, very selfish, take interest in nothing but their own comfort and that of some cat orcanary upon which their powers of affection center; and certainly theseare not outdone in egoism by the most hardened celibates of the strongersex. But what we oftenest forget is the amount of self-sacrifice hiddenmodestly away in so many of these truly admirable lives. Is it nothingto be without home and its love, without future, without personalambition? to take upon one's self that cross of solitary life, so hardto bear, especially when there is added the solitude of the heart? toforget one's self and have no other interests than the care of the old, of orphans, the poor, the infirm--those whom the brutal mechanism oflife casts out among its waste? Seen from without, these apparently tameand lusterless lives rouse pity rather than envy. Those who approachgently sometimes divine sad secrets, great trials undergone, heavyburdens beneath which too fragile shoulders bend; but this is only theside of shadow. We should learn to know and value this richness ofheart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, thisjoyful giving up of self, this persistence in sweetness and forgivenesseven toward the unworthy. Poor old maids! how many wrecked lives haveyou rescued, how many wounded have you healed, how many wanderers haveyou gently led aright, how many naked have you clothed, how many orphanshave you taken in, and how many strangers, who would have been alone inthe world but for you--you who yourselves are often remembered of noone. I mistake. Someone knows you; it is that great mysterious Pitywhich keeps watch over our lives and suffers in our misfortunes. Forgotten like you, often blasphemed, it has confided to you some of itsheavenliest messages, and that perhaps is why above your gentle comingsand goings, we sometimes seem to hear the rustling wings of ministeringangels. 

* * * * *

The good hides itself under so many different forms, that one has oftenas much pains to discover it as to unearth the best concealed crimes. ARussian doctor, who had passed ten years of his life in Siberia, condemned for political reasons to forced labor, used to find greatpleasure in telling of the generosity, courage and humanity he hadobserved, not only among a large number of the condemned, but alsoamong the convict guards. For the moment one is tempted to exclaim:Where will not the good hide away! And in truth life offers here greatsurprises and embarrassing contrasts. There are good men, officially sorecognized, quoted among their associates, I had almost said guaranteedby the Government or the Church, who can be reproached with nothing butdry and hard hearts; while we are astonished to encounter in certainfallen human beings, the most genuine tenderness, and as it were athirst for self-devotion. 

* * * * *

I should like to speak next--apropos of the inglorious good--of a classthat to-day it is thought quite fitting to treat with the utmostone-sidedness. I mean the rich. Some people think the last word is saidwhen they have stigmatized that infamy, capital. For them, all whopossess great fortunes are monsters gorged with the blood of themiserable. Others, not so declamatory, persist, however, in confoundingriches with egoism and insensibility. Justice should be visited on theseerrors, be they involuntary or calculated. No doubt there are rich menwho concern themselves with nobody else, and others who do good onlywith ostentation; indeed, we know it too well. But does their inhumanityor hypocrisy take away the value of the good that others do, and thatthey often hide with a modesty so perfect?

I knew a man to whom every misfortune had come which can strike us inour affections. He had lost a beloved wife, had seen all his childrenburied, one after another. But he had a great fortune, the result of hisown labor. Living in the utmost simplicity, almost without personalwants, he spent his time in searching for opportunities to do good, andprofiting by them. How many people he surprised in flagrant poverty, what means he combined for relieving distress and lighting up darklives, with what kindly thoughtfulness he took his friends unawares, noone can imagine. He liked to do good to others and enjoy their surprisewhen they did not know whence the relief came. It pleased him to repairthe injustices of fortune, to bring tears of happiness in familiespursued by mischance. He was continually plotting, contriving, machinating in the dark, with a childish fear of being caught with hishand in the bag. The greater part of these fine deeds were not knowntill after his death; the whole of them we shall never know. 

He was a socialist of the right sort! for there are two kinds of them. Those who aspire to appropriate to themselves a part of the goods ofothers, are numerous and commonplace. To belong to their order itsuffices to have a big appetite. Those who are hungering to divide theirown goods with men who have none, are rare and precious, for to enterthis choice company there is need of a brave and noble heart, free fromselfishness, and sensitive to both the happiness and unhappiness of itsfellows. Fortunately the race of these socialists is not extinct, and Ifeel an unalloyed satisfaction in offering them a tribute they neverclaim. 

I must be pardoned for dwelling upon this. It does one good to offsetthe bitterness of so many infamies, so many calumnies, so muchcharlatanism, by resting the eyes upon something more beautiful, breathing the perfume of these stray corners where simple goodnessflowers. 

A lady, a foreigner, doubtless little used to Parisian life, just nowtold me with what horror the things she sees here inspire her:--thesevile posters, these "yellow" journals, these women with bleached hair, this crowd rushing to the races, to dance-halls, to roulette tables, tocorruption--the whole flood of superficial and mundane life. She did notspeak the word Babylon, but doubtless it was out of pity for one of theinhabitants of this city of perdition. 

"Alas, yes, madam, these things are sad, but you have not seen all. "

"Heaven preserve me from that!"

"On the contrary, I wish you could see everything; for if the dark sideis very ugly, there is so much to atone for it. And believe me, madam, you have simply to change your quarter, or observe at another hour. Forinstance, take the Paris of early morning. It will offer much to correctyour impressions of the Paris of the night. Go see, among so many otherworking people, the street-sweepers, who come out at the hour when therevellers and malefactors go in. Observe beneath these rags thosecaryatid bodies, those austere faces! How serious they are at their workof sweeping away the refuse of the night's revelry. One might likenthem to the prophets at Ahasuerus's gates. There are women among them, many old people. When the air is cold they stop to blow their fingers, and then go at it again. So it is every day. And they, too, areinhabitants of Paris. 

"Go next to the faubourgs, to the factories, especially the smallerones, where the children or the employers labor with the men. Watch thearmy of workers marching to their tasks. How ready and willing theseyoung girls seem, as they come gaily down from their distant quarters tothe shops and stores and offices of the city. Then visit the homes fromwhich they come. See the woman of the people at her work. Her husband'swages are modest, their dwelling is cramped, the children are many, thefather is often harsh. Make a collection of the biographies of lowlypeople, budgets of modest family life: look at them attentively andlong. 

"After that, go see the students. Those who have scandalized you in thestreets are numerous, but those who labor hard are legion--only theystay at home, and are not talked about. If you knew the toil and dig ofthe Latin Quarter! You find the papers full of the rumpus made by acertain set of youths who call themselves students. The papers sayenough of those who break windows; but why do they make no mention ofthose who spend their nights toiling over problems? Because it wouldn'tinterest the public. Yes, when now and then one of them, a medicalstudent perhaps, dies a victim to professional duty, the matter has twolines in the dailies. A drunken brawl gets half a column, with everydetail elaborated. Nothing is lacking but the portraits of theheroes--and not always that!

"I should never end were I to try to point out to you all that you mustgo to see if you would see all: you would needs make the tour of societyat large, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. And certainly you would notjudge so severely then. Paris is a world, and here, as in the world ingeneral, the good hides away while the evil flaunts itself. Observingonly the surface, you sometimes ask how there can possibly be so muchriff-raff. When, on the contrary, you look into the depths, you areastonished that in this troublous, obscure and sometimes frightful lifethere can be so much of virtue. "

* * * * *

But why linger over these things? Am I _not_ blowing trumpets for thosewho hold trumpet-blowing in horror? Do not understand me so. My aim isthis--to make men think about unostentatious goodness; above all, tomake them love it and practice it. The man who finds his satisfaction inthings which glitter and hold his eyes, is lost: first, because he willthus see evil before all else; then, because he gets accustomed to thesight of only such good as seeks for notice, and therefore easilysuccumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not onlymust one be resigned to obscurity, he must love it, if he does not wishto slip insensibly into the ranks of figurants, who preserve their partsonly while under the eyes of the spectators, and put off in the wingsthe restraints imposed on the stage. Here we are in the presence of oneof the essential elements of the moral life. And this which we say istrue not only for those who are called humble and whose lot it is topass unremarked; it is just as true, and more so, for the chief actors. If you would not be a brilliant inutility, a man of gold lace andplumes, but empty inside, you must play the star rôle in the simplespirit of the most obscure of your collaborators. He who is nothingworth except on hours of parade, is worth less than nothing. Have we theperilous honor of being always in view, of marching in the front ranks?Let us take so much the greater care of the sanctuary of silent goodwithin us. Let us give to the structure whose façade is seen of ourfellow-men, a wide foundation of simplicity, of humble fidelity. Andthen, out of sympathy, out of gratitude, let us stay near our brotherswho are unknown to fame. We owe everything to them--do we not? I call towitness everyone who has found in life this encouraging experience, thatstones hidden in the soil hold up the whole edifice. All those whoarrive at having a public and recognized value, owe it to some humblespiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of thegood, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents asmodest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living;their example inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of themis forever inseparable from that conscience before which we arraignourselves. In our hours of trial, we think of them, courageous andserene, and our burdens lighten. In clouds they compass us about, thesewitnesses invisible and beloved who keep us from stumbling and our feetfrom falling in the battle; and day by day do they prove to us that thetreasure of humanity is its hidden goodness. 

X

THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME

In the time of the Second Empire, in one of our pleasantestsub-prefectures of the provinces, a little way from some bathsfrequented by the Emperor, there was a mayor, a very worthy man andintelligent too, whose head was suddenly turned by the thought that hissovereign might one day descend upon his home. Up to this time he hadlived in the house of his fathers, a son respectful of the slightestfamily traditions. But when once the all-absorbing idea of receiving theEmperor had taken possession of his brain, he became another man. Inthis new light, what had before seemed sufficient for his needs, evenenjoyable, all this simplicity that his ancestors had loved, appearedpoor, ugly, ridiculous. Out of the question to ask an Emperor to climbthis wooden staircase, sit in these old arm-chairs, walk over suchsuperannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons;pickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-roomwas made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size andsplendor. He and his family retired into close quarters, where peopleand furniture incommoded each other generally. Then, having emptied hispurse and upset his household by this stroke of genius, he awaited theroyal guest. Alas, he soon saw the end of the Empire arrive, but theEmperor never. 

The folly of this poor man is not so rare. As mad as he are all thosewho sacrifice their home life to the demands of the world. And thedanger in such a sacrifice is most menacing in times of unrest. Ourcontemporaries are constantly exposed to it, and constantly succumbing. How many family treasures have they literally thrown away to satisfyworldly ambitions and conventions; but the happiness upon which theythought to come through these impious immolations always eludes them. 

To give up the ancestral hearth, to let the family traditions fall intodesuetude, to abandon the simple domestic customs, for whatever return, is to make a fool's bargain; and such is the place in society of familylife, that if this be impoverished, the trouble is felt throughout thewhole social organism. To enjoy a normal development, this organism hasneed of well-tried individuals, each having his own value, his ownhall-mark. Otherwise society becomes a flock, and sometimes a flockwithout a shepherd. But whence does the individual draw hisoriginality--this unique something, which, joined to the distinctivequalities of others, constitutes the wealth and strength of a community?He can draw it only from his own family. Destroy the assemblage ofmemories and practices whence emanates for each home an atmosphere inminiature, and you dry up the sources of character, sap the strength ofpublic spirit. 

It concerns the country that each home be a world, profound, respected, communicating to its members an ineffaceable moral imprint. But beforepursuing the subject further, let us rid ourselves of amisunderstanding. Family feeling, like all beautiful things, has itscaricature, which is family egoism. Some families are like barred andbolted citadels, their members organized for the exploitation of thewhole world. Everything that does not directly concern them isindifferent to them. They live like colonists, I had almost saidintruders, in the society around them. Their particularism is pushed tosuch an excess that they make enemies of the whole human race. In theirsmall way they resemble those powerful societies, formed from time totime through the ages, which possess themselves of universal rule, andfor which no one outside their own community counts. This is the spiritthat has sometimes made the family seem a retreat of egoism which it wasnecessary to destroy for the public safety. But as patriotism andjingoism are as far apart as the east from the west, so are familyfeeling and clannishness. 

* * * * *

Here we are talking of right family feeling, and nothing else in theworld can take its place; for in it lie in germ all those fine andsimple virtues which assure the strength and duration of socialinstitutions. And the very base of family feeling is respect for thepast; for the best possessions of a family are its common memories. Anintangible, indivisible and inalienable capital, these souvenirsconstitute a sacred fund that each member of a family ought to considermore precious than anything else he possesses. They exist in a dualform: in idea and in fact. They show themselves in language, habits ofthought, sentiments, even instincts, and one sees them materialized inportraits, furniture, buildings, dress, songs. To profane eyes, they arenothing; to the eyes of those who know how to appreciate the things ofthe family, they are relics with which one should not part at any price. 

But what generally happens in our day? Worldliness wars upon thesentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By greatmeans and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements andpretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary. What are this stranger's rights? its titles? Upon what does it rest itsperemptory claims? This is what people too often neglect to inquire. They make a mistake. We treat the invader as very poor and simple peopledo a pompous visitor. For this incommoding guest of a day, they pillagetheir garden, bully their children and servants, and neglect theirwork. Such conduct is not only wrong, it is impolitic. One should havethe courage to remain what he is, in the face of all comers. 

The worldly spirit is full of impertinences. Here is a home which hasformed characters of mark, and is forming them yet. The people, thefurnishings, the customs are all in harmony. By marriage or throughrelations of business or pleasure, the worldly spirit enters. It findseverything out of date, awkward, too simple, lacking the modern touch. At first it restricts itself to criticism and light raillery. But thisis the dangerous moment. Look out for yourself; here is the enemy! Ifyou so much as listen to his reasonings, to-morrow you will sacrifice apiece of furniture, the next day a good old tradition, and so one by onethe family heirlooms dear to the heart will go to the bric-a-bracdealer--and filial piety with them. 

In the midst of your new habits and in the changed atmosphere, yourfriends of other days, your old relatives, will be expatriated. Yournext step will be to lay them aside in their turn; the worldly spiritleaves the old out of consideration. At last, established in anabsolutely transformed setting, even you will view yourself withamazement. Nothing will be familiar, but surely it will be correct; atleast the world will be satisfied!--Ah! that is where you are mistaken!After having made you cast out pure treasure as so much junk, it willfind that your borrowed livery fits you ill, and will hasten to make yousensible of the ridiculousness of the situation. Much better have hadfrom the beginning the courage of your convictions, and have defendedyour home. 

Many young people when they marry, listen to this voice of the world. Their parents have given them the example of a modest life; but the newgeneration thinks it affirms its rights to existence and liberty, byrepudiating ways in its eyes too patriarchal. So these young folks makeefforts to set themselves up lavishly in the latest fashion, and ridthemselves of useless property at dirt-cheap prices. Instead of fillingtheir houses with objects which say: Remember! they garnish them withquite new furnishings that as yet have no meaning. Wait, I am wrong;these things are often symbols, as it were, of a facile and superficialexistence. In their midst one breathes a certain heady vapor ofmundanity. They recall the life outside, the turmoil, the rush. And wereone sometimes disposed to forget this life, they would call back hiswandering thought and say: Remember!--in another sense: Do not forgetyour appointment at the club, the play, the races! The home, then, becomes a sort of half-way house where one comes to rest a littlebetween two prolonged absences; it isn't a good place to stay. As it hasno soul, it does not speak to yours. Time to eat and sleep, and then offagain! Otherwise you become as dull as a hermit. 

We are all acquainted with people who have a rage for being abroad, whothink the world would no longer go round if they didn't figure on allsides of it. To stay at home is penal; there they cease to be in view. Ahorror of home life possesses them to such a degree that they wouldrather pay to be bored outside than be amused gratuitously within. 

In this way society slowly gravitates toward life in herds, which mustnot be confounded with public life. The life in herds is somewhat likethat of swarms of flies in the sun. Nothing so much resembles theworldly life of a man as the worldly life of another man. And thisuniversal banality destroys the very essence of public spirit. One neednot journey far to discover the ravages made in modern society by thespirit of worldliness; and if we have so little foundation, so littleequilibrium, calm good sense and initiative, one of the chief reasonslies in the undermining of the home life. The masses have timed theirpace by that of people of fashion. They too have become worldly. Nothingcan be more so than to quit one's own hearth for the life of saloons. The squalor and misery of the homes is not enough to explain the currentwhich carries each man away from his own. Why does the peasant desertfor the inn the house that his father and grandfather found socomfortable? It has remained the same. There is the same fire in thesame chimney. Whence comes it that it lights only an incomplete circle, when in olden times young and old sat shoulder to shoulder? Somethinghas changed in the minds of men. Yielding to dangerous impulses, theyhave broken with simplicity. The fathers have quitted their post ofhonor, the wives grow dull beside the solitary hearth, and the childrenquarrel while waiting their turn to go abroad, each after his own fancy. 

We must learn again to live the home life, to value our domestictraditions. A pious care has preserved certain monuments of the past. Soantique dress, provincial dialects, old folk songs have foundappreciative hands to gather them up before they should disappear fromthe earth. What a good deed, to guard these crumbs of a great past, these vestiges of the souls of our ancestors! Let us do the same for ourfamily traditions, save and guard as much as possible of thepatriarchal, whatever its form. 

* * * * *

But not everyone has traditions to keep. All the more reason forredoubling the effort to constitute and foster a family life. And to dothis there is need neither of numbers nor a rich establishment. Tocreate a home you must have the spirit of home. Just as the smallestvillage may have its history, its moral stamp, so the smallest home mayhave its soul. Oh! the spirit of places, the atmosphere which surroundsus in human dwellings! What a world of mystery! Here, even on thethreshold the cold begins to penetrate, you are ill at ease, somethingintangible repulses you. There, no sooner does the door shut you in thanfriendliness and good humor envelop you. It is said that walls haveears. They have also voices, a mute eloquence. Everything that adwelling contains is bathed in an ether of personality. And I find proofof its quality even in the apartments of bachelors and solitary women. What an abyss between one room and another room! Here, all is dead, indifferent, commonplace: the device of the owner is written all overit, even in his fashion of arranging his photographs and books: All isthe same to me! There, one breathes in animation, a contagious joy inlife. The visitor hears repeated in countless fashions: "Whoever youare, guest of an hour, I wish you well, peace be with you!"

Words can do little justice to the subject of home, tell little aboutthe effect of a favorite flower in the window, or the charm of an oldarm-chair where the grandfather used to sit, offering his wrinkled handsto the kisses of chubby children. Poor moderns, always moving orremodeling! We who from transforming our cities, our houses, our customsand creeds, have no longer where to lay our heads, let us not add to thepathos and emptiness of our changeful existence by abandoning the lifeof the home. Let us light again the flame put out on our hearths, makesanctuaries for ourselves, warm nests where the children may grow intomen, where love may find privacy, old age repose, prayer an altar, andthe fatherland a cult!

XI

SIMPLE BEAUTY

Someone may protest against the nature of the simple life in the name ofesthetics, or oppose to ours the theory of the service of luxury--thatprovidence of business, fostering mother of arts, and grace of civilizedsociety. We shall try, briefly, to anticipate these objections. 

It will no doubt have been evident that the spirit which animates thesepages is not utilitarian. It would be an error to suppose that thesimplicity we seek has anything in common with that which misers imposeupon themselves through cupidity, or narrow-minded people through falseausterity. To the former the simple life is the one that costs least; tothe latter it is a flat and colorless existence, whose merit lies indepriving one's self of everything bright, smiling, seductive. 

It displeases us not a whit that people of large means should put theirfortune into circulation instead of hoarding it, so giving life tocommerce and the fine arts. That is using one's privileges to goodadvantage. What we would combat is foolish prodigality, the selfish useof wealth, and above all the quest of the superfluous on the part ofthose who have the greatest need of taking thought for the necessary. The lavishness of a Mæcenas could not have the same effect in a societyas that of a common spendthrift who astonishes his contemporaries by themagnificence of his life and the folly of his waste. In these two casesthe same term means very different things--to scatter money broadcastdoes not say it all; there are ways of doing it which ennoble men, andothers which degrade them. Besides, to scatter money supposes that oneis well provided with it. When the love of sumptuous living takespossession of those whose means are limited, the matter becomesstrangely altered. And a very striking characteristic of our time isthe rage for scattering broadcast which the very people have who oughtto husband their resources. Munificence is a benefit to society, that wegrant willingly. Let us even allow that the prodigality of certain richmen is a safety-valve for the escape of the superabundant: we shall notattempt to gainsay it. Our contention is that too many people meddlewith the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both theirinterest and their duty: their extravagance is a private misfortune anda public danger. 

* * * * *

So much for the utility of luxury. 

We now wish to explain ourselves upon the question of esthetics--oh!very modestly, and without trespassing on the ground of the specialists. Through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered asrivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous, stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are woundedby the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless andgraceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes usregret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation ofsuch a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much fromthe want of simplicity as does our literature--too much in it that isirrelevant, over-wrought, falsely imagined. Rarely is it given us tocontemplate in line, form, or color, that simplicity allied toperfection which commands the eyes as evidence does the mind. We need tobe rebaptized in the ideal purity of immortal beauty which puts its sealon the masterpieces; one shaft of its radiance is worth more than allour pompous exhibitions. 

* * * * *

Yet what we now have most at heart is to speak of the ordinary estheticsof life, of the care one should bestow upon the adornment of hisdwelling and his person, giving to existence that luster without whichit lacks charm. For it is not a matter of indifference whether man paysattention to these superfluous necessities or whether he does not: it isby them that we know whether he puts soul into his work. Far fromconsidering it as wasteful to give time and thought to the perfecting, beautifying and poetizing of forms, I think we should spend as much aswe can upon it. Nature gives us her example, and the man who shouldaffect contempt for the ephemeral splendor of beauty with which wegarnish our brief days, would lose sight of the intentions of Him whohas put the same care and love into the painting of the lily of an hourand the eternal hills. 

But we must not fall into the gross error of confounding true beautywith that which has only the name. The beauty and poetry of existencelie in the understanding we have of it. Our home, our table, our dressshould be the interpreters of intentions. That these intentions be soexpressed, it is first necessary to have them, and he who possesses themmakes them evident through the simplest means. One need not be rich togive grace and charm to his habit and his habitation: it suffices tohave good taste and good-will. We come here to a point very important toeverybody, but perhaps of more interest to women than to men. 

Those who would have women conceal themselves in coarse garments of theshapeless uniformity of bags, violate nature in her very heart, andmisunderstand completely the spirit of things. If dress were only aprecaution to shelter us from cold or rain, a piece of sacking or theskin of a beast would answer. But it is vastly more than this. Man putshimself entire into all that he does; he transforms into types thethings that serve him. The dress is not simply a covering, it is asymbol. I call to witness the rich flowering of national and provincialcostumes, and those worn by our early corporations. A woman's toilette, too, has something to say to us. The more meaning there is in it, thegreater its worth. To be truly beautiful, it must tell us of beautifulthings, things personal and veritable. Spend all the money you possessupon it, if its form is determined by chance or custom, if it has norelation to her who wears it, it is only toggery, a domino. Ultra-fashionable dress, which completely masks feminine personalityunder designs of pure convention, despoils it of its principalattraction. From this abuse it comes about that many things which womenadmire do as much wrong to their beauty as to the purses of theirhusbands and fathers. What would you say of a young girl who expressedher thoughts in terms very choice, indeed, but taken word for word froma phrase-book? What charm could you find in this borrowed language? Theeffect of toilettes well-designed in themselves but seen again andagain on all women indiscriminately, is precisely the same. 

I can not resist citing here a passage from Camille Lemonnier, thatharmonizes with my idea. 

"Nature has given to the fingers of woman a charming art, which sheknows by instinct, and which is peculiarly her own--as silk to the worm, and lace-work to the swift and subtle spider. She is the poet, theinterpreter of her own grace and ingenuousness, the spinner of themystery in which her wish to please arrays itself. All the talent sheexpends in her effort to equal man in the other arts, is never worth thespirit and conception wrought out through a bit of stuff in her skillfulhands. 

"Well, I wish that this art were more honored than it is. As educationshould consist in thinking with one's mind, feeling with one's heart, expressing the little personalities of the inmost, invisible _I_, --whichon the contrary are repressed, leveled down by conformity, --I would thatthe young girl in her novitiate of womanhood, the future mother, mightearly become the little exponent of this art of the toilet, her owndressmaker in short--she who one day shall make the dresses of herchildren. But with the taste and the gift to improvise, to expressherself in that masterpiece of feminine personality and skill--_a gown_, without which a woman is no more than a bundle of rags. "

The dress you have made for yourself is almost always the most becoming, and, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most. Women ofleisure too often forget this; working women, also, in city and countryalike. Since these last are costumed by dressmakers and milliners, invery doubtful imitation of the modish world, grace has almostdisappeared from their dress. And has anything more surely the gift toplease than the fresh apparition of a young working girl or a daughterof the fields, wearing the costume of her country, and beautiful fromher simplicity alone?

These same reflections might be applied to the fashion of decorating andarranging our houses. If there are toilettes which reveal an entireconception of life, hats that are poems, knots of ribbon that areveritable works of art, so there are interiors which after their mannerspeak to the mind. Why, under pretext of decorating our homes, do wedestroy that personal character which always has such value? Why haveour sleeping-rooms conform to those of hotels, our reception-rooms towaiting-rooms, by making predominant a uniform type of official beauty?

What a pity to go through the houses of a city, the cities of a country, the countries of a vast continent, and encounter everywhere certainforms, identical, inevitable, exasperating by their repetition! Howesthetics would gain by more simplicity! Instead of this luxury in joblots, all these decorations, pretentious but vapid from iteration, weshould have an infinite variety; happy improvisations would strike oureyes, the unexpected in a thousand forms would rejoice our hearts, andwe should rediscover the secret of impressing on a drapery or a piece offurniture that stamp of human personality which makes certain antiquespriceless. 

Let us pass at last to things simpler still; I mean the little detailsof housekeeping which many young people of our day find so unpoetical. Their contempt for material things, for the humble cares a housedemands, arises from a confusion very common but none the lessunfortunate, which comes from the belief that beauty and poetry arewithin some things, while others lack them; that some occupations aredistinguished and agreeable, such as cultivating letters, playing theharp; and that others are menial and disagreeable, like blacking shoes, sweeping, and watching the pot boil. Childish error! Neither harp norbroom has anything to do with it; all depends on the hand in which theyrest and the spirit that moves it. Poetry is not in things, it is in us. It must be impressed on objects from without, as the sculptor impresseshis dream on the marble. If our life and our occupations remain toooften without charm, in spite of any outward distinction they may have, it is because we have not known how to put anything into them. Theheight of art is to make the inert live, and to tame the savage. I wouldhave our young girls apply themselves to the development of the trulyfeminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. The triumph ofwoman's charm is in that work. Only a woman knows how to put into a homethat indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, "Thehousetop rejoices and is glad. " They say there are no such things asfairies, or that there are fairies no longer, but they know not whatthey say. The original of the fairies sung by poets was found, and isstill, among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, mendrents with cheerfulness, nurse the sick with smiles, put witchery intoa ribbon and genius into a stew. 

* * * * *

It is indisputable that the culture of the fine arts has somethingrefining about it, and that our thoughts and acts are in the endimpregnated with that which strikes our eyes. But the exercise of thearts and the contemplation of their products is a restricted privilege. It is not given to everyone to possess, to comprehend or to create finethings. Yet there is a kind of ministering beauty which may make its wayeverywhere--the beauty which springs from the hands of our wives anddaughters. Without it, what is the most richly decorated house? A deaddwelling-place. With it the barest home has life and brightness. Amongthe forces capable of transforming the will and increasing happiness, there is perhaps none in more universal use than this beauty. It knowshow to shape itself by means of the crudest tools, in the midst of thegreatest difficulties. When the dwelling is cramped, the purse limited, the table modest, a woman who has the gift, finds a way to make order, fitness and convenience reign in her house. She puts care and art intoeverything she undertakes. To do well what one has to do is not in hereyes the privilege of the rich, but the right of all. That is her aim, and she knows how to give her home a dignity and an attractiveness thatthe dwellings of princes, if everything is left to mercenaries, cannotpossess. 

Thus understood, life quickly shows itself rich in hidden beauties, inattractions and satisfactions close at hand. To be one's self, torealize in one's natural place the kind of beauty which is fittingthere--this is the ideal. How the mission of woman broadens and deepensin significance when it is summed up in this: to put a soul into theinanimate, and to give to this gracious spirit of things those subtleand winsome outward manifestations to which the most brutish of humanbeings is sensible. Is not this better than to covet what one has not, and to give one's self up to longings for a poor imitation of others'finery?

XII

PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN

It would perhaps be difficult to find a more convincing example thanpride to show that the obstacles to a better, stronger, serener life arerather in us than in circumstances. The diversity, and more than that, the contrasts in social conditions give rise inevitably to all sorts ofconflicts. Yet in spite of this how greatly would social relations besimplified, if we put another spirit into mapping out our plan ofoutward necessities! Be well persuaded that it is not primarilydifferences of class and occupation, differences in the outwardmanifestations of their destinies, which embroil men. If such were thecase, we should find an idyllic peace reigning among colleagues, and allthose whose interests and lot are virtually equivalent. On the contrary, as everyone knows, the most violent shocks come when equal meets equal, and there is no war worse than civil war. But that which above allthings else hinders men from good understanding, is pride. It makes aman a hedgehog, wounding everyone he touches. Let us speak first of thepride of the great. 

What offends me in this rich man passing in his carriage, is not hisequipage, his dress, or the number and splendor of his retinue: it ishis contempt. That he possesses a great fortune does not disturb me, unless I am badly disposed: but that he splashes me with mud, drivesover my body, shows by his whole attitude that I count for nothing inhis eyes because I am not rich like himself--this is what disturbs me, and righteously. He heaps suffering upon me needlessly. He humiliatesand insults me gratuitously. It is not what is vulgar within me, butwhat is noblest that asserts itself in the face of this offensive pride. Do not accuse me of envy; I feel none; it is my manhood that is wounded. We need not search far to illustrate these ideas. Every man of anyacquaintance with life has had numerous experiences which will justifyour dictum in his eyes. In certain communities devoted to materialinterests, the pride of wealth dominates to such a degree that men arequoted like values in the stock market. The esteem in which a man isheld is proportionate to the contents of his strong box. Here "Society"is made up of big fortunes, the middle class of medium fortunes. Thencome people who have little, then those who have nothing. Allintercourse is regulated by this principle. And the relatively rich manwho has shown his disdain for those less opulent, is crushed in turn bythe contempt of his superiors in fortune. So the madness of comparisonrages from the summit to the base. Such an atmosphere is ready toperfection for the nurture of the worst feeling; yet it is not wealth, but the spirit of the wealthy that must be arraigned. 

Many rich men are free from this gross conception--especially is thistrue of those who from father to son are accustomed to ease--yet theysometimes forget that there is a certain delicacy in not makingcontrasts too marked. Suppose there is no wrong in enjoying a largesuperfluity: is it indispensable to display it, to wound the eyes ofthose who lack necessities, to flaunt one's magnificence at the doors ofpoverty? Good taste and a sort of modesty always hinder a well man fromtalking of his fine appetite, his sound sleep, his exuberance ofspirits, in the presence of one dying of consumption. Many of the richdo not exercise this tact, and so are greatly wanting in pity anddiscretion. Are they not unreasonable to complain of envy, after havingdone everything to provoke it?

But the greatest lack is that want of discernment which leads men toground their pride in their fortune. To begin with, it is a childishconfusion of thought to consider wealth as a personal quality; it wouldbe hard to find a more ingenuous fashion of deceiving one's self as tothe relative value of the container and the thing contained. I have nowish to dwell on this question: it is too painful. And yet one cannotresist saying to those concerned: "Take care, do not confound what youpossess with what you are. Go learn to know the under side of worldlysplendor, that you may feel its moral misery and its puerility. " Thetraps pride sets for us are too ridiculous. We should distrustassociation with a thing that make us hateful to our neighbors and robsus of clearness of vision. 

He who yields to the pride of riches, forgets this other point, the mostimportant of all--that possession is a public trust. Without doubt, individual wealth is as legitimate as individual existence and liberty. These things are inseparable, and it is a dream pregnant with dangersthat offers battle to such fundamentals of life. But the individualtouches society at every point, and all he does should be done with thewhole in view. Possession, then, is less a privilege of which to beproud than a charge whose gravity should be felt. As there is anapprenticeship, often very difficult to serve, for the exercise of everysocial office, so this profession we call wealth demands anapprenticeship. To know how to be rich is an art, and one of the leasteasy of arts to master. Most people, rich and poor alike, imagine thatin opulence one has nothing to do but to take life easy. That is why sofew men know how to be rich. In the hands of too many, wealth, accordingto the genial and redoubtable comparison of Luther, is like a harp inthe hoofs of an ass. They have no idea of the manner of its use. 

So when we encounter a man at once rich and simple, that is to say, whoconsiders his wealth as a means of fulfilling his mission in the world, we should offer him our homage, for he is surely mark-worthy. He hassurmounted obstacles, borne trials, and triumphed in temptations bothgross and subtle. He does not fail to discriminate between the contentsof his pocketbook and the contents of his head or heart, and he doesnot estimate his fellow-men in figures. His exceptional position, insteadof exalting him, makes him humble, for he is very sensible of how far hefalls short of reaching the level of his duty. He has remained aman--that says it all. He is accessible, helpful, and far from making ofhis wealth a barrier to separate him from other men, he makes it a meansfor coming nearer and nearer to them. Although the profession of richeshas been so dishonored by the selfish and the proud, such a man as thisalways makes his worth felt by everyone not devoid of a sense ofjustice. Each of us who comes in contact with him and sees him live, isforced to look within and ask himself the question, "What would becomeof me in such a situation? Should I keep this modesty, this naturalness, this uprightness which uses its own as though it belonged to others?" Solong as there is a human society in the world, so long as there arebitterly conflicting interests, so long as envy and egoism exist on theearth, nothing will be worthier of honor than wealth permeated by thespirit of simplicity. And it will do more than make itself forgiven; itwill make itself beloved. 

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More dangerous than pride inspired by wealth is that inspired by power, and I mean by the word every prerogative that one man has over another, be it unlimited or restricted. I see no means of preventing theexistence in the world of men of unequal authority. Every organismsupposes a hierarchy of powers--we shall never escape from that law. ButI fear that if the love of power is so wide-spread, the spirit of poweris almost impossible to find. From wrong understanding and misuse of it, those who keep even a fraction of authority almost everywhere succeed incompromising it. 

Power exercises a great influence over him who holds it. A head must bevery well balanced not to be disturbed by it. The sort of dementia whichtook possession of the Roman emperors in the time of their world-widerule, is a universal malady whose symptoms belong to all times. In everyman there sleeps a tyrant, awaiting only a favorable occasion forwaking. Now the tyrant is the worst enemy of authority, because hefurnishes us its intolerable caricature, whence come a multitude ofsocial complications, collisions and hatreds. Every man who says tothose dependent on him: "Do this because it is my will and pleasure, "does ill. There is within each one of us something that invites us toresist personal power, and this something is very respectable. For atbottom we are equal, and there is no one who has the right to exactobedience from me because he is he and I am I: if he does so, hiscommand degrades me, and I have no right to suffer myself to bedegraded. 

One must have lived in schools, in work-shops, in the army, inGovernment offices, he must have closely followed the relations betweenmasters and servants, have observed a little everywhere where thesupremacy of man exercises itself over man, to form any idea of theinjury done by those who use power arrogantly. Of every free soul theymake a slave soul, which is to say the soul of a rebel. And it appearsthat this result, with its social disaster, is most certain when he whocommands is least removed from the station of him who obeys. The mostimplacable tyrant is the tyrant himself under authority. Foremen andoverseers put more violence into their dealings than superintendents andemployers. The corporal is generally harsher than the colonel. Incertain families where madam has not much more education than her maid, the relations between them are those of the convict and his warder. Andwoe everywhere to him who falls into the hands of a subaltern drunk withhis authority!

We forget that the first duty of him who exercises power is humility. Haughtiness is not authority. It is not we who are the law; the law isover our heads. We only interpret it, but to make it valid in the eyesof others, we must first be subject to it ourselves. To command and toobey in the society of men, are after all but two forms of the samevirtue--voluntary servitude. If you are not obeyed, it is generallybecause you have not yourself obeyed first. 

The secret of moral ascendancy rests with those who rule withsimplicity. They soften by the spirit the harshness of the fact. Theirauthority is not in shoulder-straps, titles or disciplinary measures. They make use of neither ferule nor threats, yet they achieveeverything. Why? Because we feel that they are themselves ready foreverything. That which confers upon a man the right to demand of anotherthe sacrifice of his time, his money, his passions, even his life, isnot only that he is resolved upon all these sacrifices himself, but thathe has made them in advance. In the command of a man animated by thisspirit of renunciation, there is a mysterious force which communicatesitself to him who is to obey, and helps him do his duty. 

In all the provinces of human activity there are chiefs who inspire, strengthen, magnetize their soldiers: under their direction the troopsdo prodigies. With them one feels himself capable of any effort, readyto go through fire, as the saying has it; and if he goes, it is withenthusiasm. 

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But the pride of the exalted is not the only pride; there is also thepride of the humble--this arrogance of underlings, fit pendant to thatof the great. The root of these two prides is the same. It is not alonethat lofty and imperious being, the man who says, "I am the law, " thatprovokes insurrection by his very attitude; it is also that pig-headedsubaltern who will not admit that there is anything beyond hisknowledge. 

There are really many people who find all superiority irritating. Forthem, every piece of advice is an offense, every criticism animposition, every order an outrage on their liberty. They would notknow how to submit to rule. To respect anything or anybody would seem tothem a mental aberration. They say to people after their fashion:"Beyond us there is nothing. "

To the family of the proud belong also those difficult andsupersensitive people who in humble life find that their superiors neverdo them fitting honor, whom the best and most kindly do not succeed insatisfying, and who go about their duties with the air of a martyr. Atbottom these disaffected minds have too much misplaced self-respect. They do not know how to fill their place simply, but complicate theirlife and that of others by unreasonable demands and morbid suspicions. 

When one takes the trouble to study men at short range, he is surprisedto find that pride has so many lurking-places among those who are bycommon consent called the humble. So powerful is this vice, that itarrives at forming round those who live in the most modest circumstancesa wall which isolates them from their neighbors. There they are, intrenched, barricaded with their ambitions and their contempts, asinaccessible as the powerful of earth behind their aristocraticprejudices. Obscure or illustrious, pride wraps itself in its darkroyalty of enmity to the human race. It is the same in misery and inhigh places--solitary and impotent, on guard against everybody, embroiling everything. And the last word about it is always this: Ifthere is so much hostility and hatred between different classes of men, it is due less to exterior conditions than to an interior fatality. Conflicting interests and differences of situation dig ditches betweenus, it is true, but pride transforms the ditches into gulfs, and inreality it is pride alone which cries from brink to brink: "There isnothing in common between you and us. "

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We have not finished with pride, but it is impossible to picture itunder all its forms. I feel most resentful against it when it meddleswith knowledge and appropriates that. We owe our knowledge to ourfellows, as we do our riches and power. It is a social force which oughtto be of service to everybody, and it can only be so when those who knowremain sympathetically near to those who know not. When knowledge isturned into a tool for ambition, it destroys itself. 

And what shall we say of the pride of good men? for it exists, and makeseven virtue hateful. The just who repent them of the evil others do, remain in brotherhood and social rectitude. But the just who despiseothers for their faults and misdeeds, cut themselves off from humanity, and their goodness, descended to the rank of an ornament for theirvanity, becomes like those riches which kindness does not inform, likeauthority untempered by the spirit of obedience. Like proud wealth andarrogant power, supercilious virtue also is detestable. It fosters inman traits and an attitude provocative of I know not what. The sight ofit repels instead of attracting, and those whom it deigns to distinguishwith its benefits feel as though they had been slapped in the face. 

To resume and conclude, it is an error to think that our advantages, whatever they are, should be put to the service of our vanity. Each ofthem constitutes for him who enjoys it an obligation and not a reasonfor vainglory. Material wealth, power, knowledge, gifts of the heart andmind, become so much cause for discord when they serve to nourishpride. They remain beneficent only so long as they are the source ofmodesty in those who possess them. 

Let us be humble if we have great possessions, for that proves that weare great debtors: all that a man has he owes to someone, and are wesure of being able to pay our debts?

Let us be humble if we sit in high places and hold the fate of others inour hands; for no clear-sighted man can fail to be sensible of unfitnessfor so grave a rôle. 

Let us be humble if we have much knowledge, for it only serves to bettershow the vastness of the unknown, and to compare the little we havediscovered for ourselves with the amplitude of that which we owe to thepains of others. 

And, above all, let us be humble if we are virtuous, since no one shouldbe more sensible of his defects than he whose conscience is illumined, and since he more than anyone else should feel the need of charitytoward evil-doers, even of suffering in their stead. 

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"And what about the necessary distinctions in life?" someone may ask. "As a result of your simplifications, are you not going to destroy thatsense of the difference between men which must be maintained if societyexists at all?"

I have no mind to suppress distinctions and differences. But I thinkthat what distinguishes a man is not found in his social rank, hisoccupation, his dress or his fortune, but solely in himself. More thanany other our own age has pricked the vain bubble of purely outwardgreatness. To be somebody at present, it does not suffice to wear themantle of an emperor or a royal crown: what honor is there in wieldingpower through gold lace, a coat of arms or a ribbon? Not that visiblesigns are to be despised; they have their meaning and use, but oncondition that they cover something and not a vacuum. The moment theycease to stand for realities, they become useless and dangerous. Theonly true distinction is superior worth. If you would have social rankduly respected, you must begin by being worthy of the rank that is yourown; otherwise you help to bring it into hatred and contempt. It isunhappily too true that respect is diminishing among us, and itcertainly is not from a lack of lines drawn round those who wish to berespected. The root of the evil is in the mistaken idea that highstation exempts him who holds it from observing the common obligationsof life. As we rise, we believe that we free ourselves from the law, forgetting that the spirit of obedience and humility should grow withour possessions and power. So it comes about that those who demand themost homage make the least effort to merit the homage they demand. Thisis why respect is diminishing. 

The sole distinction necessary is the wish to become better. The man whostrives to be better becomes more humble, more approachable, morefriendly even with those who owe him allegiance. But as he gains bybeing better known, he loses nothing in distinction, and he reaps themore respect in that he has sown the less pride. 

XIII

THE EDUCATION FOR SIMPLICITY

The simple life being above all else the product of a direction of mind, it is natural that education should have much to do with it. 

In general but two methods of rearing children are practiced: the firstis to bring them up for ourselves; the second, to bring them up forthemselves. 

In the first case the child is looked upon as a complement of theparents: he is part of their property, occupies a place among theirpossessions. Sometimes this place is the highest, especially when theparents value the life of the affections. Again, where materialinterests rule, the child holds second, third, or even the last place. In any case he is a nobody. While he is young, he gravitates round hisparents, not only by obedience, which is right, but by the subordinationof all his originality, all his being. As he grows older, thissubordination becomes a veritable confiscation, extending to his ideas, his feelings, everything. His minority becomes perpetual. Instead ofslowly evolving into independence, the man advances into slavery. He iswhat he is permitted to be, what his father's business, religiousbeliefs, political opinions or esthetic tastes require him to be. Hewill think, speak, act, and marry according to the understanding andlimits of the paternal absolutism. This family tyranny may be exercisedby people with no strength of character. It is only necessary for themto be convinced that good order requires the child to be the property ofthe parents. In default of mental force, they possess themselves of himby other means--by sighs, supplications, or base seductions. If theycannot fetter him, they snare his feet in traps. But that he should livein them, through them, for them, is the only thing admissible. 

Education of this sort is not the practice of families only, but also ofgreat social organizations whose chief educational function consists inputting a strong hand on every new-comer, in order to fit him, in themost iron-bound fashion, into existing forms. It is the attenuation, pulverization and assimilation of the individual in a social body, be ittheocratic, communistic, or simply bureaucratic and routinary. Looked atfrom without, a like system seems the ideal of simplicity in education. Its processes, in fact, are absolutely simplistic, and if a man were notsomebody, if he were only a sample of the race, this would be theperfect education. As all wild beasts, all fish and insects of the samegenus and species have the same markings, so we should all be identical, having the same tastes, the same language, the same beliefs, the sametendencies. But man is not simply a specimen of the race, and for thatreason this sort of education is far from being simple in its results. Men so vary from one another, that numberless methods have to beinvented to repress, stupefy, and extinguish individual thought. And onenever arrives at it then but in part, a fact which is continuallyderanging everything. At each moment, by some fissure, some interiorforce of initiative is making a violent way to the light, producingexplosions, upheavals, all sorts of grave disorders. And where there areno outward manifestations, the evil lies dormant; beneath apparent orderare hidden dumb revolt, flaws made by an abnormal existence, apathy, death. 

The system is evil which produces such fruit, and however simple it mayappear, in reality it brings forth all possible complications. 

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The other system is the extreme opposite, that of bringing up childrenfor themselves. The rôles are reversed: the parents are there for thechild. No sooner is he born than he becomes the center. White-headedgrandfather and stalwart father bow before these curls. His lisping istheir law. A sign from him suffices. If he cries in the night, nofatigue is of account, the whole household must be roused. The new-comeris not long in discovering his omnipotence, and before he can walk he isdrunken with it. As he grows older all this deepens and broadens. Parents, grandparents, servants, teachers, everybody is at his command. He accepts the homage and even the immolation of his neighbor: he treatslike a rebellious subject anyone who does not step out of his path. There is only himself. He is the unique, the perfect, the infallible. Too late it is perceived that all this has been evolving a master; andwhat a master! forgetful of sacrifices, without respect, even pity. Heno longer has any regard for those to whom he owes everything, and hegoes through life without law or check. 

This education, too, has its social counterpart. It flourishes whereverthe past does not count, where history begins with the living, wherethere is no tradition, no discipline, no reverence; where those who knowthe least make the most noise; where those who stand for public orderare alarmed by every chance comer whose power lies in his making a greatoutcry and respecting nothing. It insures the reign of transitorypassion, the triumph of the inferior will. I compare these twoeducations--one, the exaltation of the environment, the other of theindividual; one the absolutism of tradition, the other the tyranny ofthe new--and I find them equally baneful. But the most disastrous of allis the combination of the two, which produces human beingshalf-automatons, half-despots, forever vacillating between the spiritof a sheep and the spirit of revolt or domination. 

Children should be educated neither for themselves nor for theirparents: for man is no more designed to be a personage than a specimen. They should be educated for life. The aim of their education is to aidthem to become active members of humanity, brotherly forces, freeservants of the civil organization. To follow a method of educationinspired by any other principle, is to complicate life, deform it, sowthe seeds of all disorders. 

When we would sum up in a phrase the destiny of the child, the wordfuture springs to our lips. The child is the future. This word saysall--the sufferings of the past, the stress of to-day, hope. But whenthe education of the child begins, he is incapable of estimating thereach of this word; for he is held by impressions of the present. Whothen shall give him the first enlightenment and put him in the way heshould go? The parents, the teachers. And with very little reflectionthey perceive that their work does not interest simply themselves andthe child, but that they represent and administer impersonal powers andinterests. The child should continually appear to them as a futurecitizen. With this ruling idea, they will take thought for two thingsthat complement each other--for the initial and personal force which isgerminating in the child, and for the social destination of this force. At no moment of their direction over him can they forget that thislittle being confided to their care must become _himself_ and a_brother_. These two conditions, far from excluding each other, neverexist apart. It is impossible to be brotherly, to love, to give one'sself, unless one is master of himself; and reciprocally, none canpossess himself, comprehend his own individual being, until he has firstmade his way through the outward accidents of his existence, down to theprofound springs of life where man feels himself one with other men inall that is most intimately his own. 

To aid a child to become himself and a brother it is necessary toprotect him against the violent and destructive action of the forces ofdisorder. These forces are exterior and interior. Every child is menacedfrom without not only by material dangers but by the meddlesomeness ofalien wills; and from within, by an exaggerated idea of his ownpersonality and all the fancies it breeds. There is a great outwarddanger which may come from the abuse of power in educators. The right ofmight finds itself a place in education with extreme facility. Toeducate another, one must have renounced this right, that is to say, made abnegation of the inferior sentiment of personal importance, whichtransforms us into the enemies of others, even of our own children. Ourauthority is beneficent only when it is inspired by one higher than ourown. In this case it is not only salutary, but also indispensable, andbecomes in its turn the best guarantee against the greater peril whichthreatens the child from within--that of exaggerating his ownimportance. At the beginning of life the vividness of personalimpressions is so great, that to establish an equilibrium, they must besubmitted to the gentle influence of a calm and superior will. The truequality of the office of educator is to represent this will to thechild, in a manner as continuous and as disinterested as possible. Educators, then, stand for all that is to be respected in the world. They give to the child impressions of that which precedes it, outrunsit, envelops it: but they do not crush it; on the contrary, their willand all the influence they transmit, become elements nutritive of itsnative energy. Such use of authority as this, cultivates that fruitfulobedience out of which free souls are born. The purely personalauthority of parents, masters and institutions is to the child like thebrushwood beneath which the young plant withers and dies. Impersonalauthority, the authority of a man who has first submitted himself to thetime-honored realities before which he wishes the individual fancy ofthe child to bend, resembles pure and luminous air. True it has anactivity, and influences us in its manner, but it nourishes ourindividuality and gives it firmness and stability. Without thisauthority there is no education. To watch, to guide, to keep a firmhand--such is the function of the educator. He should appear to thechild not like a barrier of whims, which, if need be, one may clear, provided the leap be proportioned to the height of the obstacle; butlike a transparent wall through which may be seen unchanging realities, laws, limits, and truths against which no action is possible. Thusarises respect, which is the faculty of conceiving something greaterthan ourselves--respect, which broadens us and frees us by making usmore modest. This is the law of education for simplicity. It may besummed up in these words: to make _free_ and _reverential_ men, whoshall be _individual_ and _fraternal_. 

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Let us draw from this principle some practical applications. 

From the very fact that the child is the future, he must be linked tothe past by piety. We owe it to him to clothe tradition in the formsmost practical and most fit to create a deep impression: whence theexceptional place that should be given in education to the ancients, tothe cult of remembrance of the past, and by extension, to the history ofthe domestic rooftree. Above all do we fulfil a duty toward our childrenwhen we give the place of honor to the grandparents. Nothing speaks to achild with so much force, or so well develops his modesty, as to see hisfather and mother, on all occasions, preserve toward an old grandfather, often infirm, an attitude of respect. It is a perpetual object lessonthat is irresistible. That it may have its full force, it is necessaryfor a tacit understanding to obtain among all the grown-up members ofthe family. To the child's eyes they must all be in league, held tomutual respect and understanding, under penalty of compromising theireducational authority. And in their number must be counted the servants. Servants are big people, and the same sentiment of respect is injured inthe child's disregard of them as in his disregard of his father orgrandfather. The moment he addresses an impolite or arrogant word to aperson older than himself, he strays from the path that a child oughtnever to quit; and if only occasionally the parents neglect to pointthis out, they will soon perceive by his conduct toward themselves, thatthe enemy has found entrance to his heart. 

We mistake if we think that a child is naturally alien to respect, basing this opinion on the very numerous examples of irreverence whichhe offers us. Respect is for the child a fundamental need. His moralbeing feeds on it. The child aspires confusedly to revere and admiresomething. But when advantage is not taken of this aspiration, it getscorrupted or lost. By our lack of cohesion and mutual deference, we, thegrown-ups, discredit daily in the child's eyes our own cause and that ofeverything worthy of respect. We inoculate in him a bad spirit whoseeffects then turn against us. 

This pitiful truth nowhere appears with more force than in the relationsbetween masters and servants, as we have made them. Our social errors, our want of simplicity and kindness, all fall back upon the heads of ourchildren. There are certainly few people of the middle classes whounderstand that it is better to part with many thousands of dollars thanto lead their children to lose respect for servants, who represent inour households the humble. Yet nothing is truer. Maintain as strictly asyou will conventions and distances, --that demarkation of socialfrontiers which permits each one to remain in his place and to observethe law of differences. That is a good thing, I am persuaded, but oncondition of never forgetting that those who serve us are men and womenlike ourselves. You require of your domestics certain formulas of speechand certain attitudes, outward evidence of the respect they owe you. Doyou also teach your children and use yourselves manners toward yourservants which show them that you respect their dignity as individuals, as you desire them to respect yours? Here we have continually in ourhomes an excellent ground for experiment in the practice of that mutualrespect which is one of the essential conditions of social sanity. Ifear we profit by it too little. We do not fail to exact respect, butwe fail to give it. So it is most frequently the case that we get onlyhypocrisy and this supplementary result, all unexpected, --thecultivation of pride in our children. These two factors combined heap upgreat difficulties for that future which we ought to be safeguarding. Iam right then in saying that the day when by your own practices you havebrought about the lessening of respect in your children, you havesuffered a sensible loss. 

Why should I not say it? It seems to me that the greater part of uslabor for this loss. On all sides, in almost every social rank, I noticethat a pretty bad spirit is fostered in children, a spirit of reciprocalcontempt. Here, those who have calloused hands and working-clothes aredisdained; there, it is all who do not wear blue jeans. Childreneducated in this spirit make sad fellow-citizens. There is in all thisthe want of that simplicity which makes it possible for men of goodintentions, of however diverse social standing, to collaborate withoutany friction arising from the conventional distance that separates them. 

If the spirit of caste causes the loss of respect, partisanship, ofwhatever sort, is quite as productive of it. In certain quarterschildren are brought up in such fashion that they respect but onecountry--their own; one system of government--that of their parents andmasters; one religion--that which they have been taught. Does anyonesuppose that in this way men can be shaped who shall respect country, religion and law? Is this a proper respect--this respect which does notextend beyond what touches and belongs to ourselves? Strange blindnessof cliques and coteries, which arrogate to themselves with so muchingenuous complacence the title of schools of respect, and which, outside themselves, respect nothing. In reality they teach: "Country, religion, law--we are all these!" Such teaching fosters fanaticism, andif fanaticism is not the sole anti-social ferment, it is surely one ofthe worst and most energetic. 

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If simplicity of heart is an essential condition of respect, simplicityof life is its best school. Whatever be the state of your fortune, avoideverything which could make your children think themselves more orbetter than others. Though your wealth would permit you to dress themrichly, remember the evil you might do in exciting their vanity. Preserve them from the evil of believing that to be elegantly dressedsuffices for distinction, and above all do not carelessly increase bytheir clothes and their habits of life, the distance which alreadyseparates them from other children: dress them simply. And if, on thecontrary, it would be necessary for you to economize to give yourchildren the pleasure of fine clothes, I would that I might dispose youto reserve your spirit of sacrifice for a better cause. You risk seeingit illy recompensed. You dissipate your money when it would much betteravail to save it for serious needs, and you prepare for yourself, lateron, a harvest of ingratitude. How dangerous it is to accustom your sonsand daughters to a style of living beyond your means and theirs! In thefirst place, it is very bad for your purse; in the second place itdevelops a contemptuous spirit in the very bosom of the family. If youdress your children like little lords, and give them to understand thatthey are superior to you, is it astonishing if they end by disdainingyou? You will have nourished at your table the declassed--a productwhich costs dear and is worthless. 

Any fashion of instructing children whose most evident result is tolead them to despise their parents and the customs and activities amongwhich they have grown up, is a calamity. It is effective for nothing butto produce a legion of malcontents, with hearts totally estranged fromtheir origin, their race, their natural interests--everything, in short, that makes the fundamental fabric of a man. Once detached from thevigorous stock which produced them, the wind of their restless ambitiondrives them over the earth, like dead leaves that will in the end beheaped up to ferment and rot together. 

Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds, but by an evolution slowand certain. In preparing a career for our children, let us imitate her. Let us not confound progress and advancement with those violentexercises called somersaults. Let us not so bring up our children thatthey will come to despise work and the aspirations and simple spirit oftheir fathers: let us not expose them to the temptation of being ashamedof our poverty if they themselves come to fortune. A society is indeeddiseased when the sons of peasants begin to feel disgust for the fields, when the sons of sailors desert the sea, when the daughters ofworking-men, in the hope of being taken for heiresses, prefer to walkthe streets alone rather than beside their honest parents. A society ishealthy, on the contrary, when each of its members applies himself todoing very nearly what his parents have done before him, but doing itbetter, and, looking to future elevation, is content first to fulfillconscientiously more modest duties. [C]

[C] This would be the place to speak of work in general, and of itstonic effect upon education. But I have discussed the subject in mybooks _Justice_, _Jeunesse_, and _Vaillanos_. I must limit myself toreferring the reader to them. 

* * * * *

Education should make independent men. If you wish to train yourchildren for liberty, bring them up simply, and do not for a moment fearthat in so doing you are putting obstacles in the way of theirhappiness. It will be quite the contrary. The more costly toys a childhas, the more feasts and curious entertainments, the less is he amused. 

In this there is a sure sign. Let us be temperate in our methods ofentertaining youth, and especially let us not thoughtlessly create forthem artificial needs. Food, dress, nursery, amusements--let all thesebe as natural and simple as possible. With the idea of making lifepleasant for their children, some parents bring them up in habits ofgormandizing and idleness, accustom them to sensations not meant fortheir age, multiply their parties and entertainments. Sorry gifts these!In place of a free man, you are making a slave. Gorged with luxury, hetires of it in time; and yet when for one reason or another hispleasures fail him, he will be miserable, and you with him: and what isworse, perhaps in some capital encounter of life, you will be ready--youand he together--to sacrifice manly dignity, truth, and duty, from sheersloth. 

Let us bring up our children simply, I had almost said rudely. Let usentice them to exercise that gives them endurance--even to privations. Let them belong to those who are better trained to fatigue and the earthfor a bed than to the comforts of the table and couches of luxury. So weshall make men of them, independent and staunch, who may be counted on, who will not sell themselves for pottage, and who will have withal thefaculty of being happy. 

A too easy life brings with it a sort of lassitude in vital energy. Onebecomes blasé, disillusioned, an old young man, past being diverted. Howmany young people are in this state! Upon them have been deposited, likea sort of mold, the traces of our decrepitude, our skepticism, ourvices, and the bad habits they have contracted in our company. Whatreflections upon ourselves these youths weary of life force us to make!What announcements are graven on their brows!

These shadows say to us by contrast that happiness lies in a life true, active, spontaneous, ungalled by the yoke of the passions, of unnaturalneeds, of unhealthy stimulus; keeping intact the physical faculty ofenjoying the light of day and the air we breathe, and in the heart, thecapacity to thrill with the love of all that is generous, simple andfine. 

* * * * *

The artificial life engenders artificial thought, and a speech littlesure of itself. Normal habits, deep impressions, the ordinary contactwith reality, bring frankness with them. Falsehood is the vice of aslave, the refuge of the cowardly and weak. He who is free and strong isunflinching in speech. We should encourage in our children the hardihoodto speak frankly. What do we ordinarily do? We trample on naturaldisposition, level it down to the uniformity which for the crowd issynonymous with good form. To think with one's own mind, feel with one'sown heart, express one's own personality--how unconventional, howrustic!--Oh! the atrocity of an education which consists in theperpetual muzzling of the only thing that gives any of us his reason forbeing! Of how many soul-murders do we become guilty! Some are struckdown with bludgeons, others gently smothered with pillows! Everythingconspires against independence of character. When we are little, peoplewish us to be dolls or graven images; when we grow up, they approve ofus on condition that we are like all the rest of the world--automatons:when you have seen one of them you've seen them all. So the lack oforiginality and initiative is upon us, and platitude and monotony arethe distinctions of to-day. Truth can free us from this bondage: letour children be taught to be themselves, to ring clear, without crack ormuffle. Make loyalty a need to them, and in their gravest failures, ifonly they acknowledge them, account it for merit that they have notcovered their sin. 

To frankness let us add ingenuousness, in our solicitude as educators. Let us have for this comrade of childhood--a trifle uncivilized, it istrue, but so gracious and friendly!--all possible regard. We must notfrighten it away: when it has once fled, it so rarely comes back!Ingenuousness is not simply the sister of truth, the guardian of theindividual qualities of each of us; it is besides a great informing andeducating force. I see among us too many practical people, so called, who go about armed with terrifying spectacles and huge shears to ferretout naïve things and clip their wings. They uproot ingenuousness fromlife, from thought, from education, and pursue it even to the region ofdreams. Under pretext of making men of their children, they preventtheir being children at all;--as if before the ripe fruit of autumn, flowers did not have to be, and perfumes, and songs of birds, and allthe fairy springtime. 

I ask indulgence for everything naïve and simple, not alone for theinnocent conceits that flutter round the curly heads of children, butalso for the legend, the folk song, the tales of the world of marvel andmystery. The sense of the marvellous is in the child the first form ofthat sense of the infinite without which a man is like a bird deprivedof wings. Let us not wean the child from it, but let us guard in him thefaculty of rising above what is earthy, so that he may appreciate lateron those pure and moving symbols of vanished ages wherein human truthhas found forms of expression that our arid logic will never replace. 

XIV

CONCLUSION

I think I have said enough of the spirit and manifestations of thesimple life, to make it evident that there is here a whole forgottenworld of strength and beauty. He can make conquest of it who hassufficient energy to detach himself from the fatal rubbish that trammelsour days. It will not take him long to perceive that in renouncing somesurface satisfactions and childish ambitions, he increases his facultyof happiness and his possibilities of right judgment. 

These results concern as much the private as the public life. It isincontestable that in striving against the feverish will to shine, inceasing to make the satisfaction of our desires the end of our activity, in returning to modest tastes, to the true life, we shall labor for theunity of the family. Another spirit will breath in our homes, creatingnew customs and an atmosphere more favorable to the education ofchildren. Little by little our boys and girls will feel the enticementof ideals at once higher and more realizable. And transformation of thehome will in time exercise its influence on public spirit. As thesolidity of a wall depends upon the grain of the stones and theconsistence of the cement which binds them together, so also the energyof public life depends upon the individual value of men and their powerof cohesion. The great desideratum of our time is the culture of thecomponent parts of society, of the individual man. Everything in thepresent social organism leads us back to this element. In neglecting itwe expose ourselves to the loss of the benefits of progress, even tomaking our most persistent efforts turn to our own hurt. If in the midstof means continually more and more perfected, the workman diminishes invalue, of what use are these fine tools at his disposal? By their veryexcellence to make more evident the faults of him who uses them withoutdiscernment or without conscience. The wheelwork of the great modernmachine is infinitely delicate. Carelessness, incompetence or corruptionmay produce here disturbances of far greater gravity than would havethreatened the more or less rudimentary organism of the society of thepast. There is need then of looking to the quality of the individualcalled upon to contribute in any measure to the workings of thismechanism. This individual should be at once solid and pliable, inspiredwith the central law of life--to be one's self and fraternal. Everythingwithin us and without us becomes simplified and unified under theinfluence of this law, which is the same for everybody and by which eachone should guide his actions; for our essential interests are notopposing, they are identical. In cultivating the spirit of simplicity, we should arrive, then, at giving to public life a stronger cohesion. 

The phenomena of decomposition and destruction that we see there may allbe attributed to the same cause, --lack of solidity and cohesion. It willnever be possible to say how contrary to social good are the triflinginterests of caste, of coterie, of church, the bitter strife forpersonal welfare, and, by a fatal consequence, how destructive thesethings are of individual happiness. A society in which each member ispreoccupied with his own well-being, is organized disorder. This is allthat we learn from the irreconcilable conflicts of our uncompromisingegoism. 

We too much resemble those people who claim the rights of family only togain advantage from them, not to do honor to the connection. On allrounds of the social ladder we are forever putting forth claims. We alltake the ground that we are creditors: no one recognizes the fact thathe is a debtor, and our dealings with our fellows consist in invitingthem, in tones sometimes amiable, sometimes arrogant, to discharge theirindebtedness to us. No good thing is attained in this spirit. For infact it is the spirit of privilege, that eternal enemy of universal law, that obstacle to brotherly understanding which is ever presenting itselfanew. 

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In a lecture delivered in 1882, M. Renan said that a nation is "aspiritual family, " and he added: "The essential of a nation is that allthe individuals should have many things in common, and also that allshould have forgotten much. " It is important to know what to forget andwhat to remember, not only in the past, but also in our daily life. Ourmemories are lumbered with the things that divide us; the things whichunite us slip away. Each of us keeps at the most luminous point of hissouvenirs, a lively sense of his secondary quality, his part ofagriculturist, day laborer, man of letters, public officer, proletary, bourgeois, or political or religious sectarian; but his essentialquality, which is to be a son of his country and a man, is relegated tothe shade. Scarcely does he keep even a theoretic notion of it. So thatwhat occupies us and determines our actions, is precisely the thing thatseparates us from others, and there is hardly place for that spirit ofunity which is as the soul of a people. 

So too do we foster bad feeling in our brothers. Men animated by aspirit of particularism, exclusiveness, and pride, are continuallyclashing. They cannot meet without rousing afresh the sentiment ofdivision and rivalry. And so there slowly heaps up in their remembrancea stock of reciprocal ill-will, of mistrust, of rancor. All this is badfeeling with its consequences. 

It must be rooted out of our midst. Remember, forget! This we should sayto ourselves every morning, in all our relations and affairs. Rememberthe essential, forget the accessory! How much better should we dischargeour duties as citizens, if high and low were nourished from this spirit!How easy to cultivate pleasant remembrances in the mind of one'sneighbor, by sowing it with kind deeds and refraining from procedures ofwhich in spite of himself he is forced to say, with hatred in his heart:"Never in the world will I forget!"

The spirit of simplicity is a great magician. It softens asperities, bridges chasms, draws together hands and hearts. The forms which ittakes in the world are infinite in number; but never does it seem to usmore admirable than when it shows itself across the fatal barriers ofposition, interest, or prejudice, overcoming the greatest obstacles, permitting those whom everything seems to separate to understand oneanother, esteem one another, love one another. This is the true socialcement, that goes into the building of a people. 

THE END.