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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 with
reason. Think of it! Mlle. Yvonne is to be married Tuesday, and to-day
is Friday!
Callers loaded with gifts, and tradesmen bending under packages, come
and go in endless procession. The servants are at the end of their
endurance. As for the family and the betrothed, they no longer have a
life 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 at
busy clerks engulfed in papers. A fortunate thing, if there be time when
this is over, to run home and dress for the series of ceremonial
dinners--betrothal dinners, dinners of presentation, the settlement
dinner, receptions, balls. About midnight, home again, harassed and
weary, to find the latest accumulation of parcels, and a deluge of
letters--congratulations, felicitations, acceptances and regrets from
bridesmaids and ushers, excuses of tardy tradesmen. And the
_contretemps_ of the last minute--a sudden death that disarranges the
bridal party; a wretched cold that prevents a favorite cantatrice from
singing, and so forth, and so forth. Those poor Blanchards! They will
never be ready, and they thought they had foreseen everything!
Such has been their existence for a month. No longer possible to
breathe, to rest a half-hour, to tranquillize one's thoughts. _No, this
is not living!_
Mercifully, there is Grandmother's room. Grandmother is verging on
eighty. Through many toils and much suffering, she has come to meet
things with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women of
high thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair,
enjoying the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairs
surging through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of this
retreat, 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 and
belong to each other. All these things count for nothing. Don't let them
absorb you, it isn't worth while."
They know it well, these two young people. How many times in the last
weeks has their love had to make way for all sorts of conventions and
futilities! Fate, at this decisive moment of their lives, seems bent
upon drawing their minds away from the one thing essential, to harry
them with a host of trivialities; and heartily do they approve the
opinion of Grandmamma when she says, between a smile and a caress:
"Decidedly, my dears, the world is growing too complex; and it does not
make people happier--quite the contrary!"
* * * * *
I also, am of Grandmamma's opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in his
needs as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and of
himself, the man of modern times struggles through a maze of endless
complication. Nothing is simple any longer: neither thought nor action;
not pleasure, not even dying. With our own hands we have added to
existence a train of hardships, and lopped off many a gratification. I
believe that thousands of our fellow-men, suffering the consequences of
a too artificial life, will be grateful if we try to give expression to
their discontent, and to justify the regret for naturalness which
vaguely oppresses them.
Let us first speak of a series of facts that put into relief the truth
we 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 our
resources. This is not an evil in itself; for the birth of certain needs
is often a mark of progress. To feel the necessity of bathing, of
wearing fresh linen, inhabiting wholesome houses, eating healthful food,
and cultivating our minds, is a sign of superiority. But if certain
needs exist by right, and are desirable, there are others whose effects
are fatal, which, like parasites, live at our expense: numerous and
imperious, they engross us completely.
Could our fathers have foreseen that we should some day have at our
disposal the means and forces we now use in sustaining and defending our
material life, they would have predicted for us an increase of
independence, and therefore of happiness, and a decrease in competition
for worldly goods: they might even have thought that through the
simplification of life thus made possible, a higher degree of morality
would be attained. None of these things has come to pass. Neither
happiness, 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 the
future? I do not ask if they should find reason to be so, but if they
really are so. To see them live, it seems to me that a majority of them
are discontented with their lot, and, above all, absorbed in material
needs and beset with cares for the morrow. Never has the question of
food and shelter been sharper or more absorbing than since we are better
nourished, better clothed, and better housed than ever. He errs greatly
who 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 it
presents itself most simply. You must go among those who are beginning
to enjoy a little ease, to learn how greatly satisfaction in what one
has, may be disturbed by regret for what one lacks. And if you would see
anxious care for future material good, material good in all its
luxurious development, observe people of small fortune, and, above all,
the rich. It is not the woman with one dress who asks most insistently
how she shall be clothed, nor is it those reduced to the strictly
necessary who make most question of what they shall eat to-morrow. As an
inevitable consequence of the law that needs are increased by their
satisfaction, _the more goods a man has, the more he wants_. The more
assured he is of the morrow, according to the common acceptation, the
more exclusively does he concern himself with how he shall live, and
provide for his children and his children's children. Impossible to
conceive of the fears of a man established in life--their number, their
reach, 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--a
very complex mental state, best compared to the petulance of a spoiled
child, at once satisfied and discontented.
* * * * *
If we have not become happier, neither have we grown more peaceful and
fraternal. The more desires and needs a man has, the more occasion he
finds for conflict with his fellow-men; and these conflicts are more
bitter in proportion as their causes are less just. It is the law of
nature to fight for bread, for the necessities. This law may seem
brutal, but there is an excuse in its very harshness, and it is
generally limited to elemental cruelties. Quite different is the battle
for the superfluous--for ambition, privilege, inclination, luxury. Never
has hunger driven man to such baseness as have envy, avarice, and thirst
for pleasure. Egotism grows more maleficent as it becomes more refined.
We of these times have seen an increase of hostile feeling among
brothers, and our hearts are less at peace than ever.[A]
After this, is there any need to ask if we have become better? Do not
the very sinews of virtue lie in man's capacity to care for something
outside himself? And what place remains for one's neighbor in a life
given over to material cares, to artificial needs, to the satisfaction
of ambitions, grudges, and whims? The man who gives himself up entirely
to the service of his appetites, makes them grow and multiply so well
that they become stronger than he; and once their slave, he loses his
moral sense, loses his energy, and becomes incapable of discerning and
practicing the good. He has surrendered himself to the inner anarchy of
desire, which in the end gives birth to outer anarchy. In the moral life
we govern ourselves. In the immoral life we are governed by our needs
and 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 the
supreme good and the source of all other good things. It is true that in
the 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 of
others and not in our own. But the bitterness of attack against others'
possessions is only a new proof of the extraordinary importance we
attach to possession itself. In the end, people and things come to be
estimated at their selling price, or according to the profit to be drawn
from them. What brings nothing is worth nothing: he who has nothing, is
nothing. Honest poverty risks passing for shame, and lucre, however
filthy, is not greatly put to it to be accounted for merit.
Some one objects: "Then you make wholesale condemnation of progress, and
would lead us back to the good old times--to asceticism perhaps."
Not at all. The desire to resuscitate the past is the most unfruitful
and dangerous of Utopian dreams, and the art of good living does not
consist in retiring from life. But we are trying to throw light upon one
of the errors that drag most heavily upon human progress, in order to
find a remedy for it--namely, the belief that man becomes happier and
better by the increase of outward well-being. Nothing is falser than
this pretended social axiom; on the contrary, that material prosperity
without an offset, diminishes the capacity for happiness and debases
character, is a fact which a thousand examples are at hand to prove. The
worth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its center. When this
man lacks moral rectitude, progress only makes bad worse, and further
embroils social problems.
[A] The author refers to the unparalleled bitterness of the conflict in
France between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.
* * * * *
This principle may be verified in other domains than that of material
well-being. We shall speak only of education and liberty. We remember
when prophets in good repute announced that to transform this wicked
world into an abode fit for the gods, all that was needed was the
overthrow of tyranny, ignorance, and want--those three dread powers so
long in league. To-day, other preachers proclaim the same gospel. We
have seen that the unquestionable diminution of want has made man
neither better nor happier. Has this desirable result been more nearly
attained through the great care bestowed upon instruction? It does not
yet appear so, and this failure is the despair of our national
educators.
Then shall we stop the people's ears, suppress public instruction, close
the schools? By no means. But education, like the mass of our age's
inventions, is after all only a tool; everything depends upon the
workman who uses it.... So it is with liberty. It is fatal or lifegiving
according to the use made of it. Is it liberty still, when it is the
prerogative of criminals or heedless blunderers? Liberty is an
atmosphere of the higher life, and it is only by a slow and patient
inward transformation that one becomes capable of breathing it.
All life must have its law, the life of man so much the more than that
of 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 may
become an internal law. When man has once recognized the inner law, and
bowed before it, through this reverence and voluntary submission he is
ripe for liberty: so long as there is no vigorous and sovereign inner
law, he is incapable of breathing its air; for he will be drunken with
it, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law,
can no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grown
bird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yet
attained to governing himself can no more live under the law of liberty
than can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. These
things are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and new
that proves them, increases daily under our eyes. And yet we are as far
as ever from understanding even the elements of this most important law.
In our democracy, how many are there, great and small, who know, from
having personally verified it, lived it and obeyed it, this truth
without which a people is incapable of governing itself? Liberty?--it is
respect; liberty?--it is obedience to the inner law; and this law is
neither the good pleasure of the mighty, nor the caprice of the crowd,
but the high and impersonal rule before which those who govern are the
first to bow the head. Shall liberty, then, be proscribed? No; but men
must be made capable and worthy of it, otherwise public life becomes
impossible, and the nation, undisciplined and unrestrained, goes on
through license into the inextricable tangles of demagoguery.
* * * * *
When one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and
complicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and
their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which
is this: _the confusion of the secondary with the essential_. Material
comfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization--these things
constitute the frame of the picture; but the frame no more makes the
picture than the frock the monk or the uniform the soldier. Here the
picture is man, and man with his most intimate possessions--namely, his
conscience, his character and his will. And while we have been
elaborating and garnishing the frame, we have forgotten, neglected,
disfigured the picture. Thus are we loaded with external good, and
miserable in spiritual life; we have in abundance that which, if must
be, 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 buried
alive--is smothered under the mass of secondary things that weigh it
down and deprive it of light and air.
We must search out, set free, restore to honor the true life, assign
things to their proper places, and remember that the center of human
progress is moral growth. What is a good lamp? It is not the most
elaborate, the finest wrought, that of the most precious metal. A good
lamp is a lamp that gives good light. And so also we are men and
citizens, not by reason of the number of our goods and the pleasures we
procure for ourselves, not through our intellectual and artistic
culture, nor because of the honors and independence we enjoy; but by
virtue of the strength of our moral fibre. And this is not a truth of
to-day but a truth of all times.
At no epoch have the exterior conditions which man has made for himself
by his industry or his knowledge, been able to exempt him from care for
the state of his inner life. The face of the world alters around us, its
intellectual and material factors vary; and no one can arrest these
changes, whose suddenness is sometimes not short of perilous. But the
important thing is that at the center of shifting circumstance man
should remain man, live his life, make toward his goal. And whatever be
his road, to make toward his goal, the traveler must not lose himself in
crossways, nor hamper his movements with useless burdens. Let him heed
well his direction and forces, and keep good faith; and that he may the
better devote himself to the essential--which is to progress--at
whatever sacrifice, let him simplify his baggage.
II
THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY
Before considering the question of a practical return to the simplicity
of which we dream, it will be necessary to define simplicity in its very
essence. For in regard to it people commit the same error that we have
just denounced, confounding the secondary with the essential, substance
with form. They are tempted to believe that simplicity presents certain
external characteristics by which it may be recognized, and in which it
really consists. Simplicity and lowly station, plain dress, a modest
dwelling, slender means, poverty--these things seem to go together.
Nevertheless, this is not the case. Just now I passed three men on the
street: the first in his carriage; the others on foot, and one of them
shoeless. The shoeless man does not necessarily lead the least complex
life of the three. It may be, indeed, that he who rides in his carriage
is sincere and unaffected, in spite of his position, and is not at all
the slave of his wealth; it may be also that the pedestrian in shoes
neither envies him who rides nor despises him who goes unshod; and
lastly, it is possible that under his rags, his feet in the dust, the
third man has a hatred of simplicity, of labor, of sobriety, and dreams
only of idleness and pleasure. For among the least simple and
straightforward of men must be reckoned professional beggars, knights of
the road, parasites, and the whole tribe of the obsequious and envious,
whose aspirations are summed up in this: to arrive at seizing a
morsel--the biggest possible--of that prey which the fortunate of earth
consume. And to this same category, little matter what their station in
life, belong the profligate, the arrogant, the miserly, the weak, the
crafty. Livery counts for nothing: we must see the heart. No class has
the prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance,
is its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, a hut, the
cell of the ascetic nor the lowliest fisherman's bark. Under all the
forms in which life vests itself, in all social positions, at the top as
at the bottom of the ladder, there are people who live simply, and
others who do not. We do not mean by this that simplicity betrays itself
in no visible signs, has not its own habits, its distinguishing tastes
and ways; but this outward show, which may now and then be
counterfeited, must not be confounded with its essence and its deep and
wholly inward source. _Simplicity is a state of mind._ It dwells in the
main intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is the
wish 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. At
bottom, it consists in putting our acts and aspirations in accordance
with the law of our being, and consequently with the Eternal Intention
which willed that we should be at all. Let a flower be a flower, a
swallow 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 in
life we see certain quantities of matter and energy associated for
certain ends. Substances more or less crude are thus transformed and
carried to a higher degree of organization. It is not otherwise with the
life of man. The human ideal is to transform life into something more
excellent than itself. We may compare existence to raw material. What it
is, matters less than what is made of it, as the value of a work of art
lies in the flowering of the workman's skill. We bring into the world
with us different gifts: one has received gold, another granite, a third
marble, most of us wood or clay. Our task is to fashion these
substances. Everyone knows that the most precious material may be
spoiled, and he knows, too, that out of the least costly an immortal
work may be shaped. Art is the realization of a permanent idea in an
ephemeral form. True life is the realization of the higher
virtues,--justice, love, truth, liberty, moral power,--in our daily
activities, whatever they may be. And this life is possible in social
conditions the most diverse, and with natural gifts the most unequal. It
is not fortune or personal advantage, but our turning them to account,
that constitutes the value of life. Fame adds no more than does length
of days: quality is the thing.
Need we say that one does not rise to this point of view without a
struggle? The spirit of simplicity is not an inherited gift, but the
result of a laborious conquest. Plain living, like high thinking, is
simplification. We know that science is the handful of ultimate
principles gathered out of the tufted mass of facts; but what gropings
to discover them! Centuries of research are often condensed into a
principle that a line may state. Here the moral life presents strong
analogy 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 his
deeds, man arrives at a better knowledge of life. Its law appears to
him, and the law is this: _Work out your mission._ He who applies
himself to aught else than the realization of this end, loses in living
the _raison d'être_ of life. The egoist does so, the pleasure-seeker,
the ambitious: he consumes existence as one eating the full corn in the
blade,--he prevents it from bearing its fruit; his life is lost.
Whoever, on the contrary, makes his life serve a good higher than
itself, saves it in giving it. Moral precepts, which to a superficial
view appear arbitrary, and seem made to spoil our zest for life, have
really but one object--to preserve us from the evil of having lived in
vain. That is why they are constantly leading us back into the same
paths; that is why they all have the same meaning: _Do not waste your
life,_ make it bear fruit; learn how to give it, in order that it may
not consume itself! Herein is summed up the experience of humanity, and
this experience, which each man must remake for himself, is more
precious in proportion as it costs more dear. Illumined by its light, he
makes a moral advance more and more sure. Now he has his means of
orientation, his internal norm to which he may lead everything back; and
from the vacillating, confused, and complex being that he was, he
becomes simple. By the ceaseless influence of this same law, which
expands within him, and is day by day verified in fact, his opinions and
habits become transformed.
Once captivated by the beauty and sublimity of the true life, by what is
sacred and pathetic in this strife of humanity for truth, justice, and
brotherly love, his heart holds the fascination of it. Gradually
everything subordinates itself to this powerful and persistent charm.
The necessary hierarchy of powers is organized within him: the essential
commands, the secondary obeys, and order is born of simplicity. We may
compare this organization of the interior life to that of an army. An
army is strong by its discipline, and its discipline consists in respect
of the inferior for the superior, and the concentration of all its
energies toward a single end: discipline once relaxed, the army suffers.
It will not do to let the corporal command the general. Examine
carefully your life and the lives of others. Whenever something halts
or jars, and complications and disorder follow, it is because the
corporal has issued orders to the general. Where the natural law rules
in the heart, disorder vanishes.
I despair of ever describing simplicity in any worthy fashion. All the
strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything that
consoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark
paths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid
goal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity,
those who have made another object of their desires than the passing
satisfaction of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the art
of 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 that
there is need of making a clearing: the domain of our ideas is in the
same case. Anarchy reigns in human thought: we walk in the woods,
without compass or sun, lost among the brambles and briars of infinite
detail.
When once man has recognized the fact that he has an aim, and that this
aim is _to be a man_, he organizes his thought accordingly. Every mode
of thinking or judging which does not make him better and stronger, he
rejects as dangerous.
And first of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himself
with his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: it
isn't a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter.
The implements are all in place: everything indicates that this
assemblage of means is arranged with view to an end. Throw the room open
to apes. They will climb on the benches, swing from the cords, rig
themselves in draperies, coif themselves with slippers, juggle with
brushes, nibble the colors, and pierce the canvases to see what is
behind the paint. I don't question their enjoyment; certainly they must
find this kind of exercise extremely interesting. But an atelier is not
made to let monkeys loose in. No more is thought a ground for acrobatic
evolutions. A man worthy of the name, thinks as he is, as his tastes
are: he goes about it with his whole heart, and not with that fitful and
sterile curiosity which, under pretext of observing and noting
everything, runs the risk of never experiencing a deep and true emotion
or accomplishing a right deed.
Another habit in urgent need of correction, ordinary attendant on
conventional life, is the mania for examining and analyzing one's self
at every turn. I do not invite men to neglect introspection and the
examination of conscience. The endeavor to understand one's own mental
attitudes and motives of conduct is an essential element of good living.
But quite other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant observation of
one's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like a piece of
mechanism. It is a waste of time, and goes wide of the mark. The man
who, to prepare himself the better for walking, should begin by making a
rigid anatomical examination of his means of locomotion, would risk
dislocating something before he had taken a step. You have what you need
to walk with, then forward! Take care not to fall, and use your forces
with discretion. Potterers and scruple-mongers are soon reduced to
inaction. It needs but a glimmer of common sense to perceive that man is
not made to pass his life in a self-centered trance.
And common sense--do you not find what is designated by this name
becoming as rare as the common-sense customs of other days? Common sense
has become an old story. We must have something new--and we create a
factitious existence, a refinement of living, that the vulgar crowd has
not the wherewithal to procure. It is so agreeable to be distinguished!
Instead of conducting ourselves like rational beings, and using the
means most obviously at our command, we arrive, by dint of absolute
genius, at the most astonishing singularities. Better off the track than
on the main line! All the bodily defects and deformities that orthopedy
treats, give but a feeble idea of the humps, the tortuosities, the
dislocations we have inflicted upon ourselves in order to depart from
simple common sense; and at our own expense we learn that one does not
deform himself with impunity. Novelty, after all, is ephemeral. Nothing
endures but the eternal commonplace; and if one departs from that, it is
to 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 of
the first chance-comer, a mean and paltry equipment that has cost
nothing to anyone. I would compare it to those old folk-songs,
unfathered but deathless, which seem to have risen out of the very heart
of the people. Good sense is a fund slowly and painfully accumulated by
the labor of centuries. It is a jewel of the first water, whose value he
alone understands who has lost it, or who observes the lives of others
who have lost it. For my part, I think no price too great to pay for
gaining it and keeping it, for the possession of eyes that see and a
judgment that discerns. One takes good care of his sword, that it be not
bent 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 an
appeal to thought that grovels, to narrow positivism which denies
everything it cannot see or touch. For to wish that man should be
absorbed in material sensations, to the exclusion of the high realities
of the inner life, is also a want of good sense. Here we touch upon a
tender point, round which the greatest battles of humanity are waging.
In truth we are striving to attain a conception of life, searching it
out amid countless obscurities and griefs: and everything that touches
upon spiritual realities becomes day by day more painful. In the midst
of the grave perplexities and transient disorders that accompany great
crises of thought, it seems more difficult than ever to escape with any
simple principles. Yet necessity itself comes to our aid, as it has done
for the men of all times. The program of life is terribly simple, after
all, and in the fact that existence so imperiously forces herself upon
us, she gives us notice that she precedes any idea of her which we may
make for ourselves, and that no one can put off living pending an
attempt to understand life. Our philosophies, our explanations, our
beliefs are everywhere confronted by facts, and these facts, prodigious,
irrefutable, call us to order when we would deduce life from our
reasonings, and would wait to act until we have ended philosophizing. It
is this happy necessity that prevents the world from stopping while man
questions his route. Travelers of a day, we are carried along in a vast
movement to which we are called upon to contribute, but which we have
not foreseen, nor embraced in its entirety, nor penetrated as to its
ultimate aims. Our part is to fill faithfully the rôle of private, which
has devolved upon us, and our thought should adapt itself to the
situation. Do not say that we live in more trying times than our
ancestors, for things seen from afar are often seen imperfectly: it is
moreover scarcely gracious to complain of not having been born in the
days of one's grandfather. What we may believe least contestable on the
subject is this: from the beginning of the world it has been hard to see
clearly; right thinking has been difficult everywhere and always. In the
matter the ancients were in no wise privileged above the moderns, and it
might be added that there is no difference between men when they are
considered from this point of view. Master and servant, teacher and
learner, writer and artisan discern truth at the same cost. The light
that humanity acquires in advancing is no doubt of the greatest use; but
it also multiplies the number and extent of human problems. The
difficulty is never removed, the mind always encounters its obstacle.
The unknown controls us and hems us in on all sides. But just as one
need not exhaust a spring to quench his thirst, so we need not know
everything to live. Humanity lives and always has lived on certain
elemental _provisions_.
We will try to point them out. First of all, humanity lives by
confidence. In so doing it but reflects, commensurate with its conscious
thought, that which is the hidden source of all beings. An imperturbable
faith in the stability of the universe and its intelligent ordering,
sleeps in everything that exists. The flowers, the trees, the beasts of
the field, live in calm strength, in entire security. There is
confidence in the falling rain, in dawning day, in the brook running to
the 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 of
assurance. He reposes in the power which has willed that he should be.
To safeguard this confidence, to see that nothing disconcerts it, to
cultivate it, render it more personal, more evident--toward this should
tend the first effort of our thought. All that augments confidence
within 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 the
energy within us. It is our nutriment. By it man lives, much more than
by the bread he eats. And so everything that shakes this confidence is
evil--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 in
this century. What wonder that the tree withers when its roots are
watered with corrosives. And there is an extremely simple reflection
that might be made in the face of all this negation. You say life is an
evil. Well; what remedy for it do you offer? Can you combat it, suppress
it? I do not ask you to suppress your own life, to commit suicide;--of
what advantage would that be to us?--but to suppress _life_, not merely
human life, but life at its deep and hidden origin, all this upspringing
of existence that pushes toward the light and, to your mind, is rushing
to misfortune; I ask you to suppress the will to live that trembles
through the immensities of space, to suppress in short the source of
life. Can you do it? No. Then leave us in peace. Since no one can hold
life in check, is it not better to respect it and use it than to go
about making other people disgusted with it? When one knows that certain
food is dangerous to health, he does not eat it, and when a certain
fashion of thinking robs us of confidence, cheerfulness and strength, we
should reject that, certain not only that it is a nutriment noxious to
the mind, but also that it is false. There is no truth for man but in
thoughts that are human, and pessimism is inhuman. Besides, it wants as
much in modesty as in logic. To permit one's self to count as evil this
prodigious thing that we call life, one needs have seen its very
foundation, almost to have made it. What a strange attitude is that of
certain great thinkers of our times! They act as if they had created the
world, 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 with
cheering thoughts. What is truest for man is what best fortifies him.
* * * * *
If mankind lives by confidence, it lives also by hope--that form of
confidence which turns toward the future. All life is a result and an
aspiration, all that exists supposes an origin and tends toward an end.
Life is progression: progression is aspiration. The progress of the
future is an infinitude of hope. Hope is at the root of things, and must
be reflected in the heart of man. No hope, no life. The same power which
brought us into being, urges us to go up higher. What is the meaning of
this persistent instinct which pushes us on? The true meaning is that
something is to result from life, that out of it is being wrought a good
greater than itself, toward which it slowly moves, and that this painful
sower called man, needs, like every sower, to count on the morrow. The
history of humanity is the history of indomitable hope; otherwise
everything would have been over long ago. To press forward under his
burdens, to guide himself in the night, to retrieve his falls and his
failures, to escape despair even in death, man has need of hoping
always, and sometimes against all hope. Here is the cordial that
sustains him. Had we only logic, we should have long ago drawn the
conclusion: Death has everywhere the last word!--and we should be dead
of the idea. But we have hope, and that is why we live and believe in
life.
Suso, the great monk and mystic, one of the simplest and best men that
ever lived, had a touching custom: whenever he encountered a woman, were
she the poorest and oldest, he stepped respectfully aside, though his
bare feet must tread among thorns or in the gutter. "I do that," he
said, "to render homage to our Holy Lady, the Virgin Mary." Let us offer
to hope a like reverence. If we meet it in the shape of a blade of wheat
piercing the furrow; a bird brooding on its nest; a poor wounded beast,
recovering itself, rising and continuing its way; a peasant ploughing
and sowing a field that has been ravaged by flood or hail; a nation
slowly repairing its losses and healing its wounds--under whatever guise
of humanity or suffering it appears to us, let us salute it! When we
encounter it in legends, in untutored songs, in simple creeds, let us
still salute it! for it is always the same, indestructible, the immortal
daughter of God.
We do not dare hope enough. The men of our day have developed strange
timidities. The apprehension that the sky will fall--that acme of
absurdity among the fears of our Gallic forefathers--has entered our own
hearts. Does the rain-drop doubt the ocean? the ray mistrust the sun?
Our senile wisdom has arrived at this prodigy. It resembles those testy
old pedagogues whose chief office is to rail at the merry pranks or the
youthful enthusiasms of their pupils. It is time to become little
children once more, to learn again to stand with clasped hands and wide
eyes before the mystery around us; to remember that, in spite of our
knowledge, what we know is but a trifle, and that the world is greater
than our mind, which is well; for being so prodigious, it must hold in
reserve untold resources, and we may allow it some credit without
accusing ourselves of improvidence. Let us not treat it as creditors do
an insolvent debtor: we should fire its courage, relight the sacred
flame of hope. Since the sun still rises, since earth puts forth her
blossoms anew, since the bird builds its nest, and the mother smiles at
her child, let us have the courage to be men, and commit the rest to Him
who has numbered the stars. For my part, I would I might find glowing
words 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 has
the daring to do that; the most ingenuous hope is nearer truth than the
most rational despair.
* * * * *
Another source of light on the path of human life is goodness. I am not
of those who believe in the natural perfection of man, and teach that
society corrupts him. On the contrary, of all forms of evil, the one
which most dismays me is heredity. But I sometimes ask myself how it is
that this effete and deadly virus of low instincts, of vices inoculated
in the blood, the whole assemblage of disabilities imposed upon us by
the past--how all this has not got the better of us. It must be because
of 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 all
these questions a sublime and mysterious voice has answered: _Love your
fellow-men._ Love must indeed be divine, like faith and hope, since she
cannot die when so many powers are arrayed against her. She has to
combat the natural ferocity of what may be called the beast in man; she
has to meet ruse, force, self-interest, above all, ingratitude. How is
it that she passes pure and scathless in the midst of these dark
enemies, 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 against
the swift wing that soars toward the heights and eludes them. Thus love
escapes the undertakings of her foes. She does even better: she has
sometimes known the fine triumph of winning over her persecutors: she
has 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 its
teachings, and to him who penetrates its deepest sense, the most human,
is this: To save lost humanity, the invisible God came to dwell among
us, in the form of a man, and willed to make Himself known by this
single sign: _Love._
Healing, consoling, tender to the unfortunate, even to the evil, love
engenders light beneath her feet. She clarifies, she simplifies. She has
chosen the humblest part--to bind up wounds, wipe away tears, relieve
distress, soothe aching hearts, pardon, make peace; yet it is of love
that we have the greatest need. And as we meditate on the best way to
render thought fruitful, simple, really conformable to our destiny, the
method sums itself up in these words: _Have confidence and hope; be
kind._
I would not discourage lofty speculation, dissuade any one whomsoever
from brooding over the problems of the unknown, over the vast abysses of
science or philosophy. But we have always to come back from these far
journeys to the point where we are, often to a place where we seem to
stand marking time with no result. There are conditions of life and
social complications in which the sage, the thinker, and the ignorant
are alike unable to see clearly. The present age has often brought us
face to face with such situations; I am sure that he who meets them with
our method will soon recognize its worth.
* * * * *
Since I have touched here upon religious ground, at least in a general
way, someone may ask me to say in a few simple words, what religion is
the best; and I gladly express myself on this subject. But it might be
better not to put the question in this form. All religions have, of
necessity, certain fixed characteristics, and each has its inherent
qualities or defects. Strictly speaking, then, they may be compared
among themselves: but there are always involuntary partialities or
foregone conclusions. It is better to put the question otherwise, and
ask: 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 it
nourishes in you confidence, hope, love, and a sentiment of the infinite
value of existence; if it is allied with what is best in you against
what is worst, and holds forever before you the necessity of becoming a
new man; if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if it
increases your respect for the conscience of others; if it renders
forgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty more dear, the beyond
less visionary. If it does these things it is good, little matter its
name: however rudimentary it may be, when it fills this office it comes
from the true source, it binds you to man and to God.
But does it perchance serve to make you think yourself better than
others, 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 of
escaping future punishment?--oh, then, if you proclaim yourself the
follower of Buddha, Moses, Mahomet, or even Christ, your religion is
worthless--it separates you from God and man.
I have not perhaps the right to speak thus in my own name; but others
have so spoken before me who are greater than I, and notably He who
recounted to the questioning scribe the parable of the Good Samaritan. I
intrench myself behind His authority.
IV
SIMPLICITY OF SPEECH
Speech is the chief revelation of the mind, the first visible form that
it takes. As the thought, so the speech. To better one's life in the way
of simplicity, one must set a watch on his lips and his pen. Let the
word 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 is
maintained by each man's sincerity. Once sincerity diminishes,
confidence is weakened, society suffers, apprehension is born. This is
true in the province of both natural and spiritual interests. With
people whom we distrust, it is as difficult to do business as to search
for scientific truth, arrive at religious harmony, or attain to justice.
When one must first question words and intentions, and start from the
premise that everything said and written is meant to offer us illusion
in place of truth, life becomes strangely complicated. This is the case
to-day. There is so much craft, so much diplomacy, so much subtle
legerdemain, that we all have no end of trouble to inform ourselves on
the simplest subject and the one that most concerns us. Probably what I
have just said would suffice to show my thought, and each one's
experience might bring to its support an ample commentary with
illustrations. But I am none the less moved to insist on this point, and
to strengthen my position with examples.