the countries of a vast continent, and encounter everywhere certain
forms, identical, inevitable, exasperating by their repetition! How
esthetics would gain by more simplicity! Instead of this luxury in job
lots, all these decorations, pretentious but vapid from iteration, we
should have an infinite variety; happy improvisations would strike our
eyes, the unexpected in a thousand forms would rejoice our hearts, and
we should rediscover the secret of impressing on a drapery or a piece of
furniture that stamp of human personality which makes certain antiques
priceless.
Let us pass at last to things simpler still; I mean the little details
of housekeeping which many young people of our day find so unpoetical.
Their contempt for material things, for the humble cares a house
demands, arises from a confusion very common but none the less
unfortunate, which comes from the belief that beauty and poetry are
within some things, while others lack them; that some occupations are
distinguished and agreeable, such as cultivating letters, playing the
harp; and that others are menial and disagreeable, like blacking shoes,
sweeping, and watching the pot boil. Childish error! Neither harp nor
broom has anything to do with it; all depends on the hand in which they
rest 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 impresses
his dream on the marble. If our life and our occupations remain too
often without charm, in spite of any outward distinction they may have,
it is because we have not known how to put anything into them. The
height of art is to make the inert live, and to tame the savage. I would
have our young girls apply themselves to the development of the truly
feminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. The triumph of
woman's charm is in that work. Only a woman knows how to put into a home
that indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, "The
housetop rejoices and is glad." They say there are no such things as
fairies, or that there are fairies no longer, but they know not what
they say. The original of the fairies sung by poets was found, and is
still, among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, mend
rents with cheerfulness, nurse the sick with smiles, put witchery into
a ribbon and genius into a stew.
* * * * *
It is indisputable that the culture of the fine arts has something
refining about it, and that our thoughts and acts are in the end
impregnated with that which strikes our eyes. But the exercise of the
arts and the contemplation of their products is a restricted privilege.
It is not given to everyone to possess, to comprehend or to create fine
things. Yet there is a kind of ministering beauty which may make its way
everywhere--the beauty which springs from the hands of our wives and
daughters. Without it, what is the most richly decorated house? A dead
dwelling-place. With it the barest home has life and brightness. Among
the forces capable of transforming the will and increasing happiness,
there is perhaps none in more universal use than this beauty. It knows
how to shape itself by means of the crudest tools, in the midst of the
greatest 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 into
everything she undertakes. To do well what one has to do is not in her
eyes 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 that
the dwellings of princes, if everything is left to mercenaries, cannot
possess.
Thus understood, life quickly shows itself rich in hidden beauties, in
attractions and satisfactions close at hand. To be one's self, to
realize in one's natural place the kind of beauty which is fitting
there--this is the ideal. How the mission of woman broadens and deepens
in significance when it is summed up in this: to put a soul into the
inanimate, and to give to this gracious spirit of things those subtle
and winsome outward manifestations to which the most brutish of human
beings 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 than
pride to show that the obstacles to a better, stronger, serener life are
rather in us than in circumstances. The diversity, and more than that,
the contrasts in social conditions give rise inevitably to all sorts of
conflicts. Yet in spite of this how greatly would social relations be
simplified, if we put another spirit into mapping out our plan of
outward necessities! Be well persuaded that it is not primarily
differences of class and occupation, differences in the outward
manifestations of their destinies, which embroil men. If such were the
case, we should find an idyllic peace reigning among colleagues, and all
those 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 all
things else hinders men from good understanding, is pride. It makes a
man a hedgehog, wounding everyone he touches. Let us speak first of the
pride of the great.
What offends me in this rich man passing in his carriage, is not his
equipage, his dress, or the number and splendor of his retinue: it is
his contempt. That he possesses a great fortune does not disturb me,
unless I am badly disposed: but that he splashes me with mud, drives
over my body, shows by his whole attitude that I count for nothing in
his eyes because I am not rich like himself--this is what disturbs me,
and righteously. He heaps suffering upon me needlessly. He humiliates
and insults me gratuitously. It is not what is vulgar within me, but
what 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 any
acquaintance with life has had numerous experiences which will justify
our dictum in his eyes. In certain communities devoted to material
interests, the pride of wealth dominates to such a degree that men are
quoted like values in the stock market. The esteem in which a man is
held is proportionate to the contents of his strong box. Here "Society"
is made up of big fortunes, the middle class of medium fortunes. Then
come people who have little, then those who have nothing. All
intercourse is regulated by this principle. And the relatively rich man
who has shown his disdain for those less opulent, is crushed in turn by
the contempt of his superiors in fortune. So the madness of comparison
rages from the summit to the base. Such an atmosphere is ready to
perfection 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 this
true of those who from father to son are accustomed to ease--yet they
sometimes forget that there is a certain delicacy in not making
contrasts too marked. Suppose there is no wrong in enjoying a large
superfluity: is it indispensable to display it, to wound the eyes of
those who lack necessities, to flaunt one's magnificence at the doors of
poverty? Good taste and a sort of modesty always hinder a well man from
talking of his fine appetite, his sound sleep, his exuberance of
spirits, in the presence of one dying of consumption. Many of the rich
do not exercise this tact, and so are greatly wanting in pity and
discretion. Are they not unreasonable to complain of envy, after having
done everything to provoke it?
But the greatest lack is that want of discernment which leads men to
ground their pride in their fortune. To begin with, it is a childish
confusion of thought to consider wealth as a personal quality; it would
be hard to find a more ingenuous fashion of deceiving one's self as to
the relative value of the container and the thing contained. I have no
wish to dwell on this question: it is too painful. And yet one cannot
resist saying to those concerned: "Take care, do not confound what you
possess with what you are. Go learn to know the under side of worldly
splendor, that you may feel its moral misery and its puerility." The
traps pride sets for us are too ridiculous. We should distrust
association with a thing that makes us hateful to our neighbors and robs
us of clearness of vision.
He who yields to the pride of riches, forgets this other point, the most
important 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 dangers
that offers battle to such fundamentals of life. But the individual
touches society at every point, and all he does should be done with the
whole in view. Possession, then, is less a privilege of which to be
proud than a charge whose gravity should be felt. As there is an
apprenticeship, often very difficult to serve, for the exercise of every
social office, so this profession we call wealth demands an
apprenticeship. To know how to be rich is an art, and one of the least
easy of arts to master. Most people, rich and poor alike, imagine that
in opulence one has nothing to do but to take life easy. That is why so
few men know how to be rich. In the hands of too many, wealth, according
to the genial and redoubtable comparison of Luther, is like a harp in
the 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, who
considers 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 has
surmounted obstacles, borne trials, and triumphed in temptations both
gross and subtle. He does not fail to discriminate between the contents
of his pocketbook and the contents of his head or heart, and he does
not estimate his fellow-men in figures. His exceptional position, instead
of exalting him, makes him humble, for he is very sensible of how far he
falls short of reaching the level of his duty. He has remained a
man--that says it all. He is accessible, helpful, and far from making of
his wealth a barrier to separate him from other men, he makes it a means
for coming nearer and nearer to them. Although the profession of riches
has been so dishonored by the selfish and the proud, such a man as this
always makes his worth felt by everyone not devoid of a sense of
justice. Each of us who comes in contact with him and sees him live, is
forced to look within and ask himself the question, "What would become
of me in such a situation? Should I keep this modesty, this naturalness,
this uprightness which uses its own as though it belonged to others?" So
long as there is a human society in the world, so long as there are
bitterly conflicting interests, so long as envy and egoism exist on the
earth, nothing will be worthier of honor than wealth permeated by the
spirit of simplicity. And it will do more than make itself forgiven; it
will make itself beloved.
* * * * *
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 the
existence in the world of men of unequal authority. Every organism
supposes a hierarchy of powers--we shall never escape from that law. But
I fear that if the love of power is so wide-spread, the spirit of power
is almost impossible to find. From wrong understanding and misuse of it,
those who keep even a fraction of authority almost everywhere succeed in
compromising it.
Power exercises a great influence over him who holds it. A head must be
very well balanced not to be disturbed by it. The sort of dementia which
took possession of the Roman emperors in the time of their world-wide
rule, is a universal malady whose symptoms belong to all times. In every
man there sleeps a tyrant, awaiting only a favorable occasion for
waking. Now the tyrant is the worst enemy of authority, because he
furnishes us its intolerable caricature, whence come a multitude of
social complications, collisions and hatreds. Every man who says to
those 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 to
resist personal power, and this something is very respectable. For at
bottom we are equal, and there is no one who has the right to exact
obedience from me because he is he and I am I: if he does so, his
command degrades me, and I have no right to suffer myself to be
degraded.
One must have lived in schools, in work-shops, in the army, in
Government offices, he must have closely followed the relations between
masters and servants, have observed a little everywhere where the
supremacy of man exercises itself over man, to form any idea of the
injury done by those who use power arrogantly. Of every free soul they
make a slave soul, which is to say the soul of a rebel. And it appears
that this result, with its social disaster, is most certain when he who
commands is least removed from the station of him who obeys. The most
implacable tyrant is the tyrant himself under authority. Foremen and
overseers put more violence into their dealings than superintendents and
employers. The corporal is generally harsher than the colonel. In
certain families where madam has not much more education than her maid,
the relations between them are those of the convict and his warder. And
woe everywhere to him who falls into the hands of a subaltern drunk with
his 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 is
over our heads. We only interpret it, but to make it valid in the eyes
of others, we must first be subject to it ourselves. To command and to
obey in the society of men, are after all but two forms of the same
virtue--voluntary servitude. If you are not obeyed, it is generally
because you have not yourself obeyed first.
The secret of moral ascendancy rests with those who rule with
simplicity. They soften by the spirit the harshness of the fact. Their
authority is not in shoulder-straps, titles or disciplinary measures.
They make use of neither ferule nor threats, yet they achieve
everything. Why? Because we feel that they are themselves ready for
everything. That which confers upon a man the right to demand of another
the sacrifice of his time, his money, his passions, even his life, is
not only that he is resolved upon all these sacrifices himself, but that
he has made them in advance. In the command of a man animated by this
spirit of renunciation, there is a mysterious force which communicates
itself 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 troops
do prodigies. With them one feels himself capable of any effort, ready
to go through fire, as the saying has it; and if he goes, it is with
enthusiasm.
* * * * *
But the pride of the exalted is not the only pride; there is also the
pride of the humble--this arrogance of underlings, fit pendant to that
of the great. The root of these two prides is the same. It is not alone
that lofty and imperious being, the man who says, "I am the law," that
provokes insurrection by his very attitude; it is also that pig-headed
subaltern who will not admit that there is anything beyond his
knowledge.
There are really many people who find all superiority irritating. For
them, every piece of advice is an offense, every criticism an
imposition, every order an outrage on their liberty. They would not
know how to submit to rule. To respect anything or anybody would seem to
them 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 and
supersensitive people who in humble life find that their superiors never
do them fitting honor, whom the best and most kindly do not succeed in
satisfying, and who go about their duties with the air of a martyr. At
bottom these disaffected minds have too much misplaced self-respect.
They do not know how to fill their place simply, but complicate their
life and that of others by unreasonable demands and morbid suspicions.
When one takes the trouble to study men at short range, he is surprised
to find that pride has so many lurking-places among those who are by
common consent called the humble. So powerful is this vice, that it
arrives at forming round those who live in the most modest circumstances
a wall which isolates them from their neighbors. There they are,
intrenched, barricaded with their ambitions and their contempts, as
inaccessible as the powerful of earth behind their aristocratic
prejudices. Obscure or illustrious, pride wraps itself in its dark
royalty of enmity to the human race. It is the same in misery and in
high places--solitary and impotent, on guard against everybody,
embroiling everything. And the last word about it is always this: If
there 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 between
us, it is true, but pride transforms the ditches into gulfs, and in
reality it is pride alone which cries from brink to brink: "There is
nothing in common between you and us."
* * * * *
We have not finished with pride, but it is impossible to picture it
under all its forms. I feel most resentful against it when it meddles
with knowledge and appropriates that. We owe our knowledge to our
fellows, as we do our riches and power. It is a social force which ought
to be of service to everybody, and it can only be so when those who know
remain sympathetically near to those who know not. When knowledge is
turned into a tool for ambition, it destroys itself.
And what shall we say of the pride of good men? for it exists, and makes
even virtue hateful. The just who repent them of the evil others do,
remain in brotherhood and social rectitude. But the just who despise
others for their faults and misdeeds, cut themselves off from humanity,
and their goodness, descended to the rank of an ornament for their
vanity, becomes like those riches which kindness does not inform, like
authority untempered by the spirit of obedience. Like proud wealth and
arrogant power, supercilious virtue also is detestable. It fosters in
man traits and an attitude provocative of I know not what. The sight of
it repels instead of attracting, and those whom it deigns to distinguish
with 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 of
them constitutes for him who enjoys it an obligation and not a reason
for vainglory. Material wealth, power, knowledge, gifts of the heart and
mind, become so much cause for discord when they serve to nourish
pride. They remain beneficent only so long as they are the source of
modesty in those who possess them.
Let us be humble if we have great possessions, for that proves that we
are great debtors: all that a man has he owes to someone, and are we
sure of being able to pay our debts?
Let us be humble if we sit in high places and hold the fate of others in
our hands; for no clear-sighted man can fail to be sensible of unfitness
for so grave a rôle.
Let us be humble if we have much knowledge, for it only serves to better
show the vastness of the unknown, and to compare the little we have
discovered for ourselves with the amplitude of that which we owe to the
pains of others.
And, above all, let us be humble if we are virtuous, since no one should
be more sensible of his defects than he whose conscience is illumined,
and since he more than anyone else should feel the need of charity
toward evil-doers, even of suffering in their stead.
* * * * *
"And what about the necessary distinctions in life?" someone may ask.
"As a result of your simplifications, are you not going to destroy that
sense of the difference between men which must be maintained if society
exists at all?"
I have no mind to suppress distinctions and differences. But I think
that what distinguishes a man is not found in his social rank, his
occupation, his dress or his fortune, but solely in himself. More than
any other our own age has pricked the vain bubble of purely outward
greatness. To be somebody at present, it does not suffice to wear the
mantle of an emperor or a royal crown: what honor is there in wielding
power through gold lace, a coat of arms or a ribbon? Not that visible
signs are to be despised; they have their meaning and use, but on
condition that they cover something and not a vacuum. The moment they
cease to stand for realities, they become useless and dangerous. The
only true distinction is superior worth. If you would have social rank
duly respected, you must begin by being worthy of the rank that is your
own; otherwise you help to bring it into hatred and contempt. It is
unhappily too true that respect is diminishing among us, and it
certainly is not from a lack of lines drawn round those who wish to be
respected. The root of the evil is in the mistaken idea that high
station exempts him who holds it from observing the common obligations
of life. As we rise, we believe that we free ourselves from the law,
forgetting that the spirit of obedience and humility should grow with
our possessions and power. So it comes about that those who demand the
most homage make the least effort to merit the homage they demand. This
is why respect is diminishing.
The sole distinction necessary is the wish to become better. The man who
strives to be better becomes more humble, more approachable, more
friendly even with those who owe him allegiance. But as he gains by
being better known, he loses nothing in distinction, and he reaps the
more 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 first
is to bring them up for ourselves; the second, to bring them up for
themselves.
In the first case the child is looked upon as a complement of the
parents: he is part of their property, occupies a place among their
possessions. Sometimes this place is the highest, especially when the
parents value the life of the affections. Again, where material
interests 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 his
parents, not only by obedience, which is right, but by the subordination
of all his originality, all his being. As he grows older, this
subordination becomes a veritable confiscation, extending to his ideas,
his feelings, everything. His minority becomes perpetual. Instead of
slowly evolving into independence, the man advances into slavery. He is
what he is permitted to be, what his father's business, religious
beliefs, political opinions or esthetic tastes require him to be. He
will think, speak, act, and marry according to the understanding and
limits of the paternal absolutism. This family tyranny may be exercised
by people with no strength of character. It is only necessary for them
to be convinced that good order requires the child to be the property of
the parents. In default of mental force, they possess themselves of him
by other means--by sighs, supplications, or base seductions. If they
cannot fetter him, they snare his feet in traps. But that he should live
in them, through them, for them, is the only thing admissible.