II

It appears to be the fact that many people believe me to be a man who

lives shut up in a library, buried among books, isolated from the

world. They say that I lack what they call the sense of reality. As

for the first charge, that I spend my days devouring books, it is a

pure fiction. I travel more than I wish to travel and I see more people

than I wish to see. With regard to the second, my lack of the sense of

reality--let us consider it.

That which men of the world--and in my speech and writings I always use

this phrase in a sufficiently depreciatory sense--that which men of

the world call the sense of reality appears to me to be no more than a

sense of apparentiality. A man is said to possess the sense of reality

who stops to consider only the transient surface of things and does not

penetrate into their permanent substance.

Those who are said to possess this sense of reality are interested

only in news, what is called the latest information. And as for me--I

must say it perfectly frankly--I detest the latest information. There

is nothing in the newspaper that strikes me as so empty as the page

devoted to the latest news. This craving to have news, news usually

lacking in any deep import, as quickly as possible, seems to me

puerile. The important thing, I have always supposed, is to know things

thoroughly, not to know them quickly.

But the current runs in the other direction. For one who reads a book

with the sole purpose of knowing, enjoying and profiting by it, there

are twenty who read it simply in order to say that they have read it

and to gain kudos by quoting from it.

There are, or at any rate there ought to be, in each one of us two men,

the temporal and the eternal, the one who is preoccupied with the cares

of the passing day and the one who is preoccupied with the eternal

preoccupations, the one who says: “What shall I eat, or how shall I

amuse myself to-morrow?” and the one who says: “What will happen to us

after death?” In some cases the inner man dominates and leads captive

the external man and then the individual either retires to a monastery

or he lives a life of resigned despair, ceaseless wrestling with

mystery; and in some cases the external and temporal man subjugates

and strangles the inner and eternal man, and then we have the man of

the world, the man who boasts of being practical and of possessing the

sense of reality. And this practical man does not interest me in the

least.

When I find myself in a modern city, in one of these cities that are

called progressive because of their system of police and hygiene,

with smoothly paved streets, pretentious buildings, electric trams,

luxurious motors replete with fashionably dressed women, well-kept

parks, comfortable clubs, theatres--in short, complete with all the

apparatus of a modern city--whenever I find myself in such a city

I am enveloped, invaded and oppressed by a sense of profound and

utter solitude. The men appear to me like shadows without substance.

And like Diogenes I begin to look for a man, a real man, a man who

wrestles with destiny and mystery, a man of religious spirit, a man,

in short, who believes in God or denies Him, but who believes in Him

or denies Him passionately, with the heart, not merely in virtue of

some philosophical formula forming part of the general knowledge that a

well-educated man is expected to possess.

I set about looking for a man ... and rarely, very rarely, do I find

him. “The man you ought to know is López,” they tell me, “a man of

culture and distinction.” And so, although without any illusion, and

chiefly in order not to offend the friend who recommends him to me, I

get to know López. And in effect López has read a great deal and knows

the names of the most prominent writers and publicists and discusses

Comte and Spencer and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and has read the

latest French novelists, and knows several famous passages of poetry

by heart and has his tincture of history, sociology, psychology and

natural science, and López ... is not the man I am looking for.

It is not the great classic authors that López has read, the essential

geniuses, the men who have gazed at the Sphinx face to face, but rather

their expositors and commentators; he knows the great minds of all

time as they are reflected in manuals of the history of philosophy or

literature. Once perhaps, not so much even for curiosity’s sake as to

be able to say that he has read them, he has looked into the book of

Job or St. Augustine or Pascal or à Kempis, but his heart has not been

touched. And naturally López does not interest me, does not even appear

to me to be a man; he is simply a member of a club, or a member of

Parliament, or a brilliant figure in polite society. His distinction

is of the same category as that of his wife’s mediocre facility in

playing the piano. López knows how to present himself to the best

advantage.

But fortunately and thanks to God I do not live in one of these

cities, which are all alike, all attempting to imitate Paris. I live

in an ancient city, whose age is perpetual youth, whose golden stones

distil memories. And even so, whenever I can I escape into the country

and there I talk with some old shepherd who has brooded for long

hours beneath the sky upon eternal themes. And this man who reads no

newspapers, who does not know where Serbia is and has never heard of

Dreyfus or Anatole France or the Kaiser, who knows nothing about the

latest sociological theory or the latest fashion in morning coats, this

man speaks to me the ancient words of the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. And

as he has never read Ecclesiastes, but has derived his wisdom from the

same fount, the ancient words come to me new, eternally new.

Many times I have wished in my secret heart that I had lived in one of

those ages of burning faith, among a people consumed by an infinite

passion, among the Crusaders or among the Albigenses, in the ranks of

Cromwell’s Ironsides or of Coligny’s Huguenots, or in the obscurity

of the monastery in which Heinrich Seuss underwent his tremendous

mortifications.... But who in God’s name, if he be a man and a real

man, can stand one of those banquets with which the friends of the

distinguished López celebrate the honour of his being appointed

governor of a province, with their interminable toasts, all full of the

same empty platitudes, pronounced to the hateful accompaniment of the

popping of champagne corks? When the unavoidable exigencies of social

servitude compel me to attend one of these ceremonies of homage, I feel

a desire to get up and say: “Brothers, let us meditate upon death!” and

launch forth into a sermon. I don’t do so, of course, though not for

fear of ridicule, but because I know that it would avail nothing.

* * * * *

But enough of unbosoming myself. You needn’t be afraid, I know that

I am a slave, I know that we are all slaves.... I will return to the

beaten track, I will return to “objective” themes, but.... But must

my heart never be allowed the relief of a sigh, a sigh at once of

resignation and rebellion? Must I not be allowed some time to say that

all this that you call civilization appears to me to be nothing but the

trappings of culture and that those who are content merely with the

trappings are savages muffled in royal robes, and that the splendour of

your metropolises leaves me cold?