doors! People widely read and far-travelled are often not acquainted
with their fellow-citizens, great or small. Their lives depend upon the
coöperation of a multitude of beings whose lot remains to them quite
indifferent. Not those to whom they owe their knowledge and culture, not
their rulers, nor those who serve them and supply their needs, have ever
attracted their attention. That there is ingratitude or improvidence in
not knowing one's workmen, one's servants, all those in short with whom
one has indispensable social relations--this has never come into their
minds. Others go much farther. To certain wives, their husbands are
strangers, and conversely. There are parents who do not know their
children: their development, their thoughts, the dangers they run, the
hopes they cherish, are to them a closed book. Many children do not know
their parents, have no suspicion of their difficulties and struggles, no
conception of their aims. And I am not speaking of those piteously
disordered homes where all the relations are false, but of honorable
families. Only, all these people are greatly preoccupied: each has his
outside interest that fills all his time. The distant duty--very
attractive, I don't deny--claims them entirely, and they are not
conscious of the duty near at hand. I fear they will have their trouble
for their pains. Each person's base of operations is the field of his
immediate duty. Neglect this field, and all you undertake at a distance
is compromised. First, then, be of your own country, your own city, your
own home, your own church, your own work-shop; then, if you can, set out
from this to go beyond it. That is the plain and natural order, and a
man must fortify himself with very bad reasons to arrive at reversing
it. At all events, the result of so strange a confusion of duties is
that many people employ their time in all sorts of affairs except those
in which we have a right to demand it. Each is occupied with something
else 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 to
be 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 consequence
of following the theory would be the evil in force until the malefactors
were found and had offset it. But suppose they are not found? or suppose
they can not or will not make amends?
The rain falls on your head through a hole in the roof, or the wind
blows in at a broken window. Will you wait to find the man who caused
the mischief? You would certainly think that absurd. And yet such is
often the practice. Children indignantly protest, "I didn't put it
there, and I shall not take it away!" And most men reason after the same
fashion. It is logic. But it is not the kind of logic that makes the
world 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 tears
down, another builds up; one defaces, another restores; one stirs up
quarrels, another appeases them; one makes tears to flow, another wipes
them away; one lives for evil-doing, another dies for the right. And in
the workings of this grievous law lies salvation. This also is logic,
but a logic of facts which makes the logic of theories pale. The
conclusion of the matter is not doubtful; a single-hearted man draws it
thus: given the evil, the great thing is to make it good, and to set
about it on the spot; well indeed if Messrs. the Malefactors will
contribute to the reparation; but experience warns us not to count too
much on their aid.
* * * * *
But however simple duty may be, there is still need of strength to do
it. In what does this strength consist, or where is it found? One could
scarcely tire of asking. Duty is for man an enemy and an intruder, so
long as it appears as an appeal from without. When it comes in through
the door, he leaves by the window; when it blocks up the windows, he
escapes by the roof. The more plainly we see it coming, the more surely
we flee. It is like those police, representatives of public order and
official justice, whom an adroit thief succeeds in evading. Alas! the
officer, though he finally collar the thief, can only conduct him to the
station, not along the right road. Before man is able to accomplish his
duty, 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, or
goes about it with indifference, all the forces of earth cannot make
him follow it with enthusiasm. But he who loves his office moves of
himself; not only is it needless to compel him, but it would be
impossible to turn him aside. And this is true of everybody. The great
thing is to have felt the sanctity and immortal beauty in our obscure
destiny; to have been led by a series of experiences to love this life
for its griefs and its hopes, to love men for their weakness and their
greatness, and to belong to humanity through the heart, the intelligence
and the soul. Then an unknown power takes possession of us, as the wind
of the sails of a ship, and bears us toward pity and justice. And
yielding to its irresistible impulse, we say: _I cannot help it,
something is there stronger than I._ In so saying, the men of all times
and places have designated a power that is above humanity, but which may
dwell in men's hearts. And everything truly lofty within us appears to
us as a manifestation of this mystery beyond. Noble feelings, like great
thoughts and deeds, are things of inspiration. When the tree buds and
bears fruit, it is because it draws vital forces from the soil, and
receives 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 in
contact with the eternal source of goodness. This central force
manifests itself under a thousand forms. Sometimes it is indomitable
energy; sometimes winning tenderness; sometimes the militant spirit that
grasps and uproots the evil; sometimes maternal solicitude, gathering to
its arms from the wayside where it was perishing, some bruised and
forgotten life; sometimes the humble patience of long research. All that
it touches bears its seal, and the men it inspires know that through it
we 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 the
outward glory of their office, well knowing that nothing is great,
nothing small, but that our life and our deeds are only of worth because
of the spirit which breathes through them.
VI
SIMPLE NEEDS
When we buy a bird of the fancier, the good man tells us briefly what is
necessary for our new pensioner, and the whole thing--hygiene, food, and
the rest--is comprehended in a dozen words. Likewise, to sum up the
necessities of most men, a few concise lines would answer. Their régime
is in general of supreme simplicity, and so long as they follow it, all
is well with them, as with every obedient child of Mother Nature. Let
them depart from it, complications arise, health fails, gayety vanishes.
Only simple and natural living can keep a body in full vigor. Instead of
remembering this basic principle, we fall into the strangest
aberrations.
What material things does a man need to live under the best conditions?
A healthful diet, simple clothing, a sanitary dwelling-place, air and
exercise. I am not going to enter into hygienic details, compose menus,
or discuss model tenements and dress reform. My aim is to point out a
direction and tell what advantage would come to each of us from ordering
his life in a spirit of simplicity. To know that this spirit does not
rule in our society we need but watch the lives of men of all classes.
Ask different people, of very unlike surroundings, this question: What
do you need to live? You will see how they respond. Nothing is more
instructive. For some aboriginals of the Parisian asphalt, there is no
life possible outside a region bounded by certain boulevards. There one
finds the respirable air, the illuminating light, normal heat, classic
cookery, and, in moderation, so many other things without which it would
not be worth the while to promenade this round ball.
On the various rungs of the bourgeois ladder people reply to the
question, what is necessary to live? by figures varying with the degree
of their ambition or education: and by education is oftenest understood
the outward customs of life, the style of house, dress, table--an
education precisely skin-deep. Upward from a certain income, fee, or
salary, life becomes possible: below that it is impossible. We have seen
men commit suicide because their means had fallen under a certain
minimum. They preferred to disappear rather than retrench. Observe that
this minimum, the cause of their despair, would have been sufficient for
others of less exacting needs, and enviable to men whose tastes are
modest.
On lofty mountains vegetation changes with the altitude. There is the
region of ordinary flora, that of the forests, that of pastures, that of
bare 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 pine
flourishes at considerable heights. Human life, with its needs, reminds
one 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 necessary
includes a certain number of domestics and equipages, as well as several
town and country houses. Further on flourishes the rich upper middle
class, with its own standards and life. In other regions we find men of
ample, moderate, or small means, and very unlike exigencies. Then come
the people--artisans, day-laborers, peasants, in short, the masses, who
live dense and serried like the thick, sturdy growths on the summits of
the mountains, where the larger vegetation can no longer find
nourishment. In all these different regions of society men live, and no
matter in which particular regions they flourish, all are alike human
beings, bearing the same mark. How strange that among fellows there
should be such a prodigious difference in requirements! And here the
analogies of our comparison fail us. Plants and animals of the same
families have identical wants. In human life we observe quite the
contrary. What conclusion shall we draw from this, if not that with us
there is a considerable elasticity in the nature and number of needs?
Is it well, is it favorable to the development of the individual and his
happiness, and to the development and happiness of society, that man
should have a multitude of needs, and bend his energies to their
satisfaction? Let us return for a moment to our comparison with inferior
beings. Provided that their essential wants are satisfied, they live
content. Is this true of men? No. In all classes of society we find
discontent. I leave completely out of the question those who lack the
necessities of life. One cannot with justice count in the number of
malcontents those from whom hunger, cold, and misery wring complaints. I
am considering now that multitude of people who live under conditions at
least supportable. Whence comes their heart-burning? Why is it found not
only among those of modest though sufficient means, but also under
shades of ever-increasing refinement, all along the ascending scale,
even to opulence and the summits of social place? They talk of the
contented middle classes. Who talk of them? People who, judging from
without, think that as soon as one begins to enjoy ease he ought to be
satisfied. But the middle classes themselves--do they consider
themselves satisfied? Not the least in the world. If there are people at
once rich and content, be assured that they are content because they
know how to be so, not because they are rich. An animal is satisfied
when it has eaten; it lies down and sleeps. A man also can lie down and
sleep for a time, but it never lasts. When he becomes accustomed to this
contentment, he tires of it and demands a greater. Man's appetite is not
appeased by food; it increases with eating. This may seem absurd, but it
is strictly true.
And the fact that those who make the most outcry are almost always those
who should find the best reasons for contentment, proves unquestionably
that happiness is not allied to the number of our needs and the zeal we
put into their cultivation. It is for everyone's interest to let this
truth sink deep into his mind. If it does not, if he does not by
decisive 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 absorbed
in her toilettes, the profligate of low estate or high, or simply the
ordinary pleasure-lover, a "good fellow," but too obedient to material
needs--that man or woman is on the downward way of desire, and the
descent is fatal. Those who follow it obey the same laws as a body on an
inclined plane. Dupes of an illusion forever repeated, they think: "Just
a 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 the
further they go the less able they are to resist it.
Here is the secret of the unrest, the madness, of many of our
contemporaries. Having condemned their will to the service of their
appetites, they suffer the penalty. They are delivered up to violent
passions which devour their flesh, crush their bones, suck their blood,
and cannot be sated. This is not a lofty moral denunciation. I have
been 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 of
quenching thirst? Not at all. It might rather be called the art of
making thirst inextinguishable. Frank libertinage, does it deaden the
sting of the senses? No; it envenoms it, converts natural desire into a
morbid obsession and makes it the dominant passion. Let your needs rule
you, 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 seeks
for happiness in material prosperity alone. As well undertake to fill
the cask of the Danaïdes. To those who have millions, millions are
wanting; to those who have thousands, thousands. Others lack a
twenty-franc piece or a hundred sous. When they have a chicken in the
pot, they ask for a goose; when they have the goose, they wish it were a
turkey, 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 many
poor working-men who ape the well-to-do middle classes, too many
shop-girls who play at being ladies, too many clerks who act the
club-man or sportsman; and among those in easy circumstances and the
rich, are too many people who forget that what they possess could serve
a better purpose than procuring pleasure for themselves, only to find in
the end that one never has enough. Our needs, in place of the servants
that they should be, have become a turbulent and seditious crowd, a
legion of tyrants in miniature. A man enslaved to his needs may best be
compared to a bear with a ring in its nose, that is led about and made
to dance at will. The likeness is not flattering, but you will grant
that it is true. It is in the train of their own needs that so many of
those men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress, and I don't
know what else. They cannot take a step without asking themselves if it
might not irritate their masters. How many men and women have gone on
and on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too many
needs and could not resign themselves to simple living. There are many
guests in the chambers of Mazas who could give us much light on the
subject of too exigent needs.
Let me tell you the story of an excellent man whom I knew. He tenderly
loved his wife and children, and they all lived together, in France, in
comfort and plenty, but with little of the luxury the wife coveted.
Always short of money, though with a little management he might have
been at ease, he ended by exiling himself to a distant colony, leaving
his wife and children in the mother country. I don't know how the poor
man can feel off there; but his family has a finer apartment, more
beautiful toilettes, and what passes for an equipage. At present they
are perfectly contented, but soon they will be used to this
luxury--rudimentary after all. Then Madam will find her furniture common
and her equipage mean. If this man loves his wife--and that cannot be
doubted--he will migrate to the moon if there is hope of a larger
stipend. In other cases the rôles are reversed, and the wife and
children are sacrificed to the ravenous needs of the head of the family,
whom an irregular life, play, and countless other costly follies have
robbed of all dignity. Between his appetites and his rôle of father he
has decided for the former, and he slowly drifts toward the most abject
egoism.
This forgetfulness of all responsibility, this gradual benumbing of
noble feeling, is not alone to be found among pleasure-seekers of the
upper classes: the people also are infected. I know more than one little
household, which ought to be happy, where the mother has only pain and
heartache day and night, the children are barefoot, and there is great
ado for bread. Why? Because too much money is needed by the father. To
speak only of the expenditure for alcohol, everybody knows the
proportions that has reached in the last twenty years. The sums
swallowed up in this gulf are fabulous--twice the indemnity of the war
of 1870. How many legitimate needs could have been satisfied with that
which has been thrown away on these artificial ones! The reign of wants
is by no means the reign of brotherhood. The more things a man desires
for himself, the less he can do for his neighbor, and even for those
attached to him by ties of blood.
* * * * *
The destruction of happiness, independence, moral fineness, even of the
sentiment of common interests--such is the result of the reign of needs.
A multitude of other unfortunate things might be added, of which not the
least is the disturbance of the public welfare. When society has too
great needs, it is absorbed with the present, sacrifices to it the
conquests 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 in
youth, destroying in a day the fruit of long years; to warm your house
by burning your furniture; to burden the future with debts for the sake
of present pleasure; to live by expedients and sow for the morrow
trouble, sickness, ruin, envy and hate--the enumeration of all the
misdeeds of this fatal régime has no end.
On the other hand, if we hold to simple needs we avoid all these evils
and replace them by measureless good. That temperance and sobriety are
the best guardians of health is an old story. They spare him who
observes them many a misery that saddens existence; they insure him
health, love of action, mental poise. Whether it be a question of food,
dress, or dwelling, simplicity of taste is also a source of independence
and 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 a
period of idleness does not suffice to dispossess you: a change of
position, even considerable, does not put you to confusion. Having
simple needs, you find it less painful to accustom yourself to the
hazards of fortune. You remain a man, though you lose your office or
your income, because the foundation on which your life rests is not your
table, your cellar, your horses, your goods and chattels, or your money.
In adversity you will not act like a nursling deprived of its bottle and
rattle. Stronger, better armed for the struggle, presenting, like those
with shaven heads, less advantage to the hands of your enemy, you will
also be of more profit to your neighbor. For you will not rouse his
jealousy, his base desires or his censure, by your luxury, your
prodigality, or the spectacle of a sycophant's life; and, less absorbed
in your own comfort, you will find the means of working for that of
others.
VII
SIMPLE PLEASURES
Do you find life amusing in these days? For my part, on the whole, it
seems rather depressing, and I fear that my opinion is not altogether
personal. As I observe the lives of my contemporaries, and listen to
their talk, I find myself unhappily confirmed in the opinion that they
do not get much pleasure out of things. And certainly it is not from
lack of trying; but it must be acknowledged that their success is
meagre. 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 the
chaplet 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 are
filled with a multitude of embarrassments, any one of which would be
enough to spoil our temper. From morning till night, wherever we go, the
people we meet are hurried, worried, preoccupied. Some have spilt their
good blood in the miserable conflicts of petty politics: others are
disheartened by the meanness and jealousy they have encountered in the
world of literature or art. Commercial competition troubles the sleep of
not a few. The crowded curricula of study and the exigencies of their
opening careers, spoil life for young men. The working classes suffer
the consequences of a ceaseless industrial struggle. It is becoming
disagreeable to govern, because authority is diminishing; to teach,
because respect is vanishing. Wherever one turns there is matter for
discontent.
And yet history shows us certain epochs of upheaval which were as
lacking in idyllic tranquillity as is our own, but which the gravest
events did not prevent from being gay. It even seems as if the
seriousness of affairs, the uncertainty of the morrow, the violence of
social convulsions, sometimes became a new source of vitality. It is not
a rare thing to hear soldiers singing between two battles, and I think
myself nowise mistaken in saying that human joy has celebrated its
finest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance. But to sleep
peacefully on the eve of battle or to exult at the stake, men had then
the stimulus of an internal harmony which we perhaps lack. Joy is not in
things, it is in us, and I hold to the belief that the causes of our
present unrest, of this contagious discontent spreading everywhere, are
in us at least as much as in exterior conditions.
To give one's self up heartily to diversion one must feel himself on a
solid basis, must believe in life and find it within him. And here lies
our weakness. So many of us--even, alas! the younger men--are at
variance with life; and I do not speak of philosophers only. How do you
think a man can be amused while he has his doubts whether after all life
is worth living? Besides this, one observes a disquieting depression of
vital force, which must be attributed to the abuse man makes of his
sensations. Excess of all kinds has blurred our senses and poisoned our
faculty for happiness. Human nature succumbs under the irregularities
imposed upon it. Deeply attainted at its root, the desire to live,
persistent in spite of everything, seeks satisfaction in cheats and
baubles. In medical science we have recourse to artificial respiration,
artificial alimentation, and galvanism. So, too, around expiring
pleasure we see a crowd of its votaries, exerting themselves to reawaken
it, to reanimate it Most ingenious means have been invented; it can
never be said that expense has been spared. Everything has been tried,
the possible and the impossible. But in all these complicated alembics
no one has ever arrived at distilling a drop of veritable joy. We must
not 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 at
great cost of a Stradivarius make one a musician? No more, if you had
the whole paraphernalia of amusement in the perfection of its
ingenuity, would it advance you upon your road. But with a bit of
crayon a great artist makes an immortal sketch. It needs talent or
genius to paint; and to amuse one's self, the faculty of being happy:
whoever possesses it is amused at slight cost. This faculty is destroyed
by scepticism, artificial living, over-abuse; it is fostered by
confidence, moderation and normal habits of thought and action.