him, amused the crowds, but the idea of God went to his head, and he
began to believe in me, supposing me omnipotent. It was then that
I ceased to visit him, for I do not care to make myself the facile
accomplice of religious divagations. Left to himself, he went on
hearing me; my voice sounded like a buzzing in his deaf ears. His
faith grew measureless, and he accepted martyrdom. How different from
the charming Epicurus, for whom our conversations were never more
than a lofty diversion! But this Paul, although hallucinated, was not
incapable of a certain imposture, and it was assuredly to magnify
himself in the eyes of fools that he pretended to have been ravished to
heaven. It is true that he believed in my resurrection. What tales! One
would say that men only give words a precise meaning in order to have
the pleasure of using them in an opposite sense. Your brain plays very
singular tricks. The dead are dead. The dead are not dead. The dead are
living. The dead alone are alive. What jugglers you are!
I ceased to do anything but amuse myself with the developments of
the new religion. It produced very charming feminine souls. What a
priceless creature was Saint Cecilia, what an ingenuous lover. Perhaps
no other woman has known nights so delicious as those that Cecilia
passed with the angel who came to visit her....
I
Valerian found Cecilia praying in her bed with an angel.
HE
Poor Valerian! He never suspected the purity of his betrothed. He
loved her too well to be disturbed even by the evidence. And so he
well deserved the eternal crown that the Church decreed him. If women
were better cognisant of the story of that excellent young man, with
what favour would they not decorate his memory and his image! Cecilia
never ceased to love him. An enchantment enveloped these simple hearts.
I completed their happiness by letting them die in ecstasy with the
certainty of finding beyond death their interrupted kisses, and of
finding them eternal.
I learnt, my friend, to understand the peculiar beauty that the new
religion concealed within itself; it held more grace than the purest
paganism, and I know not what of simplicity and tenderness that I had
not met before. Stoic insensibility became ridiculous; suffering was
the fashion; the crowns of roses were changed to crowns of thorns.
There were long centuries of stupor, and when the human soul awoke
again and wished to smile, its smile was half of melancholy. Perhaps
men will never recover from the wound that Christianity has given them.
Sometimes it has seemed to heal over; at the slightest shock, at the
slightest fever, it opens again and bleeds. Happy are those who suffer!
That insensate saying still haunts your enfeebled hearts, and you fear
joy, from vanity. You accepted the anathema hurled at the happiness
of living by a few despairing Jews, and when you have laughed you ask
pardon from your brothers, because it is written: "Happy are those who
suffer."
Man, who is always making a pretence of revolt, is the most obedient of
domesticated animals. He has accepted the most infamous prescriptions
of all the moralities in turn, and among you it has always been a
title to honour to kneel before a decalogue and receive blows from a
rope on the back. The great hypocrites have always been your chosen
masters, and one still hears you neigh at the idea of sacrifice. Your
sensibility has flowered ill; your intelligence is inadequate. It has
always shown itself the dupe of the directors of conscience who have
succeeded each other on your shoulders. The preachers of virtue rarely
practise it. You have always had to deal with thirsty throats whose
only care has been to make you believe that the fountain has been
poisoned.
The moralist is the eternal old man who makes a terrible picture of
love to the young girl of whom he is amorous. Advice that fetters
the development of energy is always hypocritical, that is to say
interested, advice. There is also the naïve imitation of hypocrisy;
there are the fools, the vain, the subaltern rogues: but these are the
masters whom it is necessary to unmask.
I
What! Have there never been sincere great minds, true friends of
mankind?
HE
What I have just said to you must not be taken tragically. The greatest
hypocrites are never perfect hypocrites. There is in them always one
part of sincerity. The exercise of sincerity is the most natural
thing in man. It needs a strong will to create a fictitious character
for oneself; it also needs much talent, perhaps even genius. The
hypocrite, in showing himself under a fictitious aspect, diminishes
his pleasure in living; he will recover it in its entirety only when
he has moulded to his pattern a great number of disciples; hence the
proselytism of all the great creators of social lies. But hypocrisy
ceases when the new environment has been created, itself the creator
of new characters. The early Protestants feigned a certain rigidity
of manners in order to depreciate the Papists. This hypocrisy became
traditional, then hereditary, and it is with veritable good faith that
the Calvinists banish from life all that might make its beauty and
its sweetness. The Catholics, for strategical purposes, have set, in
their sermons at least, a still higher value on the scorn of pleasure,
and it is in all naïveté and good faith, like the Calvinists, that
they prescribe several virtues whose practice would fling humanity
back beyond the state of savagery. The philosophers, moreover, do
not to-day hold views different from these, and they would be much
astonished, from what they say, to see civilisation, with its delicious
complications, fall into ruin, and make the earth like the fields where
once was Troy, and the deserts where rises still the phantom of Timgad.
The moral theories of humanity and the form that they give to its
daily life must be separately considered.
I have spoken to you of the great hypocrites. There have also been
men of great simplicity. Neither have had on the general march of
events the influence you might suppose. The world of ideas and of
words is one world, and the world of facts and of action is another.
They doubtless react on each other, but so slightly, so gently, and
with so much delay, that their reciprocal influences are very hard to
establish. Hardly before the last fifty or sixty years have the social
ideas of Christianity seemed occasionally to take an active form, and
then with what timidity! Perhaps Christianity will one day be realised
in practice, but it will then have long disappeared as religion,
philosophy, or system of ethics. And a new discord between thought and
life will be apparent.
Even this much post-dated realisation of the great social doctrines
is, perhaps, only an allusion. The field of thought and the parallel
field of action are finite; and so the same thoughts must return
after a turn of the wheel, and the same acts. Their coincidence, near
or distant, is perhaps fortuitous. It is in vain that you think and
speak; action enrolls itself upon another plane, and the two planes are
perhaps eternally incapable of intersection.
At most it is admissible that the vague spectacle of things inspires
in man a chirruping like that which takes the birds at sunrise. But
would you say that it was this chirruping that made the sun rise? Your
reasonings on the power of ideas, which would make them the creators of
action, resemble that supposition. The ideas of man can never be other
than ideas after the fact. The future? Do you even know what sort of
weather we shall have to-morrow? The future that you pretend to forsee
is only a past arranged by your imagination and your sensibility. You
believe that what you wish to happen will happen. Children!
The exercise of thought is a game, but this game must be free and
harmonious. The more useless you conceive it, the more beautiful you
should wish it to be. Beauty; that is, perhaps, its only possible
merit. In any case you must not permit in it those little creeping
ideas that haunt corrupted brains, as wood-lice haunt rotten wood.
I
Our thoughts, then, are freer than our actions?
HE
One can more easily retain in them the illusion of liberty. We are all
of us, men and gods, in the power of destiny, and nothing happens that
is not the logical and necessary consequence of previous movements
of eternal matter. We are vessels fitfully carried by winds and
currents towards an unknown end; but it is one thing to descend the
unconquerable stream steering between the rocks, and another to spin
rudderless and derelict. Thought is a rudder that must never be loosed
nor entrusted to unworthy hands.
But these ideas are very general, and can scarcely, I think, bring
you much consolation. I am like the apocalyptic preachers who replace
reasoning by personifications of abstract things. I have not come to
you to offer you models of eloquence or stimulating enigmas. If I make
yet one more effort in favour of men, I wish it to be unambiguous
and clear. But, alas! there are questions where the very gods lose
themselves like children in a forest. The reason of things escapes us
as it escapes yourselves. We too are dust of infinity, a little more
brilliant, that is all.
Our assemblies, however, consider some problems as solved. They trouble
you still. We have enslaved them, and our intelligence is their master.
I will put their solutions in your hands, and then we will go for a
walk in this springtime that perhaps you will never see again....
I
Never? Never?
HE
So beautiful, so tender, so limpid, so perfumed. I have no power over
your human destiny and do not know it. Before descending....
I
And how, master, did you descend among us?
HE
What a little girl's question! I come on earth as easily and as
naturally as you go to America. How? The knowledge would be very
useless to you, and could only tempt you to puerile and dangerous
experiments. But there is another question that you dare not ask me,
and to which I shall reply, for it is in your head if not upon your
lips. Dearest children, bring us more flowers, bring us fruits, give us
your smiles.
The three young women awoke, and came to present their brows to us. My
friend offered me her lips by mistake; I took advantage of this, which
made her blush. She fled, rejoining her companions.
It was clear and hot, though the sun was not visible. The light seemed
to come from everywhere, and objects threw no shadows. This phenomenon,
instead of frightening me, increased my sensation of happiness. It
seemed to me that I had reached at last a state of beatitude long
desired. Love sang in my heart. I observed with tenderness the folds
of my friend's white dress, which floated behind her as she ran. Her
garland of flowers fell, and, as she stooped to pick it up, her candid
breasts showed at the edge of her corsage. I could not prevent myself
from rushing towards her, in a frenzy, my mouth full of kisses and
troubled words.
I
You have not hurt yourself?
ELISE
But I have not fallen.
And she laughed, while she was fastening her hair. I had taken the
garland, meanwhile, and was inhaling it like a bouquet. That made her
laugh still more.
I
Flowers, Elise, have no longer their own odour when they have slept in
your hair or on your neck; it is as if they had become you. It is your
fragrance that I breathe....
ELISE
As you like....
Elise also no longer knew very well what she was saying. Or was she,
perhaps, reading my heart! Like my master, she had just replied to a
prayer that I dared not formulate.
I stretched out both arms to take with open hands the flower that I
desired, the flower that was being given me, but Elise was already in
flight. I caught her up in the middle of a thicket of lilacs. It was
there that she gave me my happiness.
Her dress, which was only a tunic, fell slowly, unveiling the
loveliness of my divinity, who seemed to me to be Beauty herself. She
was so beautiful that my admiration, for an instant, was stronger than
my desire. My transport had carried me to the summit of a mountain so
high that I became dizzy and my head spun. When I came to myself, it
seemed to me that I had put on a new dignity, and that the resurrection
that had snatched me from a delicious death was my entry into a more
precious life.
My friend, once more dressed in her robe, her garland of flowers on her
refastened hair, was picking branches of lilac. I rose to help her, for
an enormous sheaf was already filling her white arms; she gave it me,
and then she made a harvest of pinks and roses, and we returned to my
master.
He did not seem to have noticed our absence. He praised the flowers and
breathed their scents, thanking my friend, who was blushing a little,
for her graciousness. The two other young women came back with cherries
and early peaches, less soft than their rosy cheeks. I followed the
example of my master, who kissed the hands of the young fruit-bearers,
and congratulated them on being the picture of pleasure, of abundance,
and of generosity.
Instead of sitting down, they crouched at the feet of their master, and
offered him the finest of the fruits, looking in his face for signs of
content. There was a divine charm in this simple, pastoral picture,
and, for a long time, I observed it with joy. These three beings seemed
in such perfect communion that the sweetest aroma of peace surrounded
their bodies. Satisfied, he touched their cheeks and their hair.
HE
Children, I love you.
They took again their places round the table. My friend, who had leaned
her head on my shoulder, sat up to welcome them. They spoke in a
whisper.
HE
I would tell you, my friend, in answer to your secret desire, that
our life, up there, or rather yonder, is very different from the life
of men. To begin with, the gods are very few in number, two or three
thousand at most, men and women. I say, men and women, because that is
all we are, with superior faculties. Raise by many powers the genius of
your geniuses, and you have the measure of those among us who dominate
the others. The lesser among us are also gods, that is to say that
their sensibility, their intelligence, their force and their beauty
attain a degree that you can with difficulty conceive. Your arts, your
sciences, your noblest passions are instincts in us; indeed, we attach
but small importance to them. The length of our life has ended by
teaching us the uselessness of all that is not pure sensation, and our
principal care is the cultivation of our senses, which are, in fact,
highly developed. We deliver ourselves to every pleasure with a divine
frankness, and it would be difficult for those of us who have not
associated with men to understand the meanings you have given to the
words lust, gluttony, and idleness. On the other hand, the pleasures of
relativity are unknown to us, and we are ignorant of vanity, deceit,
envy, or anger. Our pride is only the consciousness of the force that
we feel is living in ourselves.
Our women differ little from yours, that is to say that they bear the
same relation to us as yours to you. We do not consider them inferior
but different, and this difference makes our common happiness. They
are admirable creatures of pleasure, but the pride that is natural to
them makes them selfish. My friend, even for a god, above all for a
god, perhaps, your women equal ours. They know how to forget themselves
in love; they know how to find their happiness in the happiness
that they give. If their senses are less delicate, their flesh less
odorous, their arts of pleasure more rudimentary, their hearts are more
sensitive. Ah! to read in their eyes their gratitude for the pleasure
they have given.
The three young women, who had listened attentively, lowered their
heads, smiling at each other out of the corners of their eyes. My
friend, however, dared to speak.
ELISE
But we are also grateful for the pleasure that is given us. Our
sensibility is not only in our hearts.
I
Women do seem to have no other pleasure than the pleasure they give.
ELISE
I do not believe that.
HE
Dear creature of pleasure, it is none the less true.
ELISE
It is true, since you say it, but these women are not true women.
HE
They are different from you, my friend; that is all. But I agree with
you; true women both give and receive.
ELISE
That is true indeed!
I
Divine friend, how I love you!
ELISE
And I, I detest you.
I stretched out my arms to draw to me those lips that I desired, but
she took my hands in hers, and kissed them passionately.
HE
And you envy the gods!
I
I envy neither the gods nor any man, and I desire no other woman, since
I have known Elise.
HE
My coming upon earth, this time, will at least have given happiness to
one human being.
ELISE
Or two.
I
What a dream! Do not awake us!
HE
You shall not be awakened.
The two young women looked at me curiously. I even thought that I
discerned some sort of pity in their eyes. My master divined my thought.
HE
Yes, my friend, they are immortals. They came as I have come. Is it
more surprising to see goddesses on earth than to see a god?
I turned towards Elise, paling with emotion.
HE
She too. But do not be afraid, for she loves you, and love has given
her a heart exactly like your man's heart. She has become a woman in
giving herself to you, and she will never leave you.
ELISE
Never. Never so long as you live, my mortal lover. Never, and your
memory shall share my immortality.
I
Now I understand the superhuman happiness I found in your arms, O
queen! But is that possible? Have the times of mythology returned?
HE
You see it. They have never been abolished, moreover, unless in your
beliefs, unless in what you believe that you believe. For is not
Christianity, just like the religions it thought it destroyed, the
story of the relations between gods and men? Does the visit of a dove
to the loveliest of the Jewish women differ so much from the visit of
the swan to the voluptuous Leda? The spirit in which you consider these
divine anecdotes, changes with the centuries, but the anecdotes are
always the same, because love is always the same. If your priests were
to hear me, they would say that I blasphemed, I who was that swan, I
who was that dove. But when they say that I was the son of the dove,
they think they are stating a great truth, and perhaps they are right,
since that fable has changed the colour of heaven. But the colour of
heaven will change again, and they will not perceive it.
All your science hitherto has consisted in giving different names to
different appearances. Some day, perhaps, you will learn that the
same thing happens always, that is to say nothing, and you will leave
the illegible romance of the infinite, and live your own lives. It is
worth the trouble. Some day you will learn this, and you will be much
astonished at having lost centuries upon centuries in vainly observing
phenomena of which you perceive only the broken reflections in a sea
that is shaken by the storms of your imagination.
The life of the gods, my friend, differs from yours in this above
all, that it is for them without finality. Our acts are sufficient to
themselves, and we do not look for their justification in immediate or
distant consequences. The wretchedness of your activity is, that it
foresees repose. Our end is in the act; yours in the effects of the
act. But, since happiness is in the act, you pass it by, and when you
rest it is in weariness and boredom. For us, to live is to act, and
to act is to be happy. Perhaps, rather than supermen, we are superior
animals: intuition serves us as instinct, and if sometimes we know
regret we are always ignorant of remorse. Passion, which may mislead us
for a moment, leaves us satisfied, as soon as we have obeyed it, even
if our desire has been unable to realise itself in its entirety, even
if our curiosity has had to stop half-way. There remains to us then the
having exercised against an obstacle our faculties of action; we bear
no malice against the obstacle. We are like children who have lost in a
game, and are, all the same, very happy to have played.
I
True, man wishes to win, always to win, and, beaten, if he does not
suffer in his vanity, he suffers in his pride.
HE
Which is not a genuine pride. Pride worthy of the name does not rebel
against superior forces. It yields as quickly as possible and retires
into itself, proud of what it is and disdainful of what it is not. Your
human pride is often no more than a blind folly. The pride of the gods
is clear-sighted. But what need have you of knowing us, since you have
no power over us? Your prayers move us, as the songs of the birds move
you, according to our mood; we find them painful or agreeable, and in
either case pass on, thinking of serious matters, that is to say of the
living of our lives. The gods, my friend, are selfish, and, if they
busy themselves with men, it is from caprice, in order to vary their
pleasures. Your joys, to tell you the truth, touch us more nearly than
your sorrows, and, if we had the power, we would more willingly send
new happinesses to the happy than joys to the doleful. For we hold in
great scorn intellectual disorder, and unbalanced sensibility: now
unhappiness is produced by one of these two troubles, or by both. He
who is master of neither his nerves nor his thought does not seem to
us very worthy of pity. Help, moreover, would be useless to him. Help
would be for him no more than the brief sunbeam that passes between
two storm-clouds that the wind has separated for a moment. And then, we
have no power. Ruled, like you, by destiny, we contemplate the eternal
movement of things, with a more perspicacious eye, but as powerless to
alter their course.
None the less, I am not pitiless. Physical evil breaks my heart, and
it is precisely that which is altogether beyond my power, that which
is without a remedy. Life eternally devours itself. Every organism is
a prey. The living is eaten alive. Every animal is a feast, and every
animal is a guest. The healthy state is to be a feast. The gods do not
escape this dilemma; they are so organised as to be a durable feast,
that is all. They resist the attacks of the infinitely little, as a
mountain resists a colony of ants. But let time pass, and century after
century go by, and the ants will have got the better of the mountain,
though they are, nevertheless, destined themselves to perish under
invisible bites.
We shall see, as I have already told you, and it pains me to think
of it, humanity disappear, and with it all the? animal species that
people the earth to-day. Other forms are elaborating in the mysteries
of eternal matter. The water of the oceans ferments and swells with
life round the magnetic poles. That which is born rises tirelessly
against that which has been born. The sorrow of living is the obscure
consciousness of feeling oneself dying.
But when I see humanity disappear, it is at first in the manner of the
ants and the bees, and of all the other animalities, once intelligent
and creative, now reduced to mechanical existence. You will come to
resemble marvellous clocks. Your mathematical complexity will be the
admiration of the intelligences which have succeeded your own.
Their multiple and contradictory activity will stop sometimes, struck
by surprise, to observe the sureness of your movements, and you will
still be one of the terms, though no longer the same, in the disturbing
problem of intelligence and instinct.
I have also sometimes thought that on your earth there would be a slow
return towards primordial unity. Every organism would be re-absorbed
into that formless yet living jelly, which has been differentiated,
little by little, in the course of time, into myriads of dissimilar
beings. The movement, after reaching its climax, would retrace its
steps. Evolution would continue in retrogression. The vertebrate would
become once more the annelid, the annelid the nothing that creeps like
a spot of oil on the surface of water.
As for the destruction of our solar world by a cataclysm, it is a
theatrical idea, but though theatrical, not impossible. It is at
once dramatic and vulgar, within the reach of everybody, and without
philosophical or scientific interest. Anybody can conceive a shock, and
a bursting in pieces, as he conceives a fire, a wreck, or an explosion.
If it is the truth, it is without interest. The truth is a bridge that
must be crossed to gain the other side of the stream.
He rose. The young women, enchanted, shook their dresses, and arranged
the folds of them. Elise threw me a tender look and joined her
companions, who were already moving away.
HE