You must understand that this concerns happiness and not pleasure, or
well-being, or enjoyment, or the delight of the senses.
All cultivated people have created different words to designate these
different things. All have committed their moralists to the task of
preserving simple souls from a confusion which our instincts favor.
Delight of the senses, you who are the eternally unsatisfactory, is it
true, intangible one, that you will always deceive us and that we shall
always seek for happiness through you?
What seductiveness is not yours, O you who smile with the lips of love,
O mysterious phantom of joy? How you lure us and enchain us! Well you
know how to array yourself, at times, in the appearance of a sacred
mission, a religious duty!
No, you are not happiness, divine though you are! To live without you
is a bitter misfortune, but you are not happiness!
Why does happiness command us to sacrifice you often, to mistrust you
always?
There is no happiness without harmony; you know this very well, you who
are delicious disorder itself, death, laughter, strife.
Happiness is our homeland. You are only the burning country we long
for, the tropical isle where our dreams exile themselves, never to
return.
Happiness is our true kingdom. Delight of the senses, let your slaves
hymn your praise.
V
During the summer of 1916 I found among the meadows of the Marne a
flower that had three odors. It is a very common flower in France: it
adorns a low and spiny plant which the peasants call “_arrête-bœuf_.”
Toward midday, at the hour when the sun exasperates all its creatures,
this flower exhales three different odors: the first is soft, fresh and
resembles the perfume of the sweet pea; the second is sharp and makes
one think of phosphor irritant, of a flame; the third is the secret
breath of love. This miraculous flower really has all three of these
odors at once, but we perceive them more easily one at a time because
we are not worthy of all this wealth.
This little discovery descended upon my weary head like a benediction.
At that time we were leaving the miseries of Verdun behind and were
just on the point of plunging into those of the Somme. The intermediate
rest depressed us and enervated us by turns. In the walks across the
fields which we took with our comrades, I grew accustomed every day to
gather a root of _arrête-bœuf_ and offer it, as a gift, to those who
accompanied me, so that they might share my discovery.
Some of them, anxious about the world and their own fortune, took
pleasure in this modest marvel. They breathed in with these perfumes
the inexhaustible variety of the lavish universe. They distinguished
and recognized, smilingly, the three odors of this one being. They
honored these three ambassadors whom a people of unknown virtues had
assigned to them. They interpreted as a revelation the little signs
of the latent opulence which challenges and disdains the majority of
bewildered men.
But others remained insensible to this delicate prayer, and these I
thought of with chagrin as of men who had no care for the welfare of
their own souls.
I know quite well you will say, “There is no relation between this
flower and the welfare of the soul.” But this relation does exist,
emphatically and definitely. Truth shines out of every merest trifle
that goes to make up the world. We must fasten our eyes ardently upon
it, as if it were a light shining through the branches, and march
forward.
I am sure, we are all sure, that happiness is the very reason for our
existence. Let it be added at once that happiness is founded upon
possession, that is to say, upon the perfect and profound understanding
of something.
For this reason men who have a high conception of happiness aspire to
the complete and definite knowledge of an absolute, a perfection which
they name God. The desire for eternal life is a boundless need of
possession.
Equally noble is the passionate desire of certain men to understand, to
possess themselves, to have such an exact and merciless conception of
their moral and physical nature as will give them some sort of mastery
over it.
It is indeed a beautiful destiny to pursue the understanding of the
external world with the weapons and the arguments of a science that is
not the slave of conquest. Men who achieve this may indeed be called
just.
Others wish to possess a house, a field, a pair of earrings, an
automobile. For them possession is not understanding, it is above
all else an exclusive and almost solitary enjoyment. They deceive
themselves about happiness and about possession. They deceive
themselves to the actual point of war, massacre and destruction.
If we wish it, we may possess the whole universe, and it is in this
possession that we shall find the salvation of our souls. We may
possess, for example, that unknown something which walks by the
road-side, the color of the forest of pointed firs that rises sharply
against the southern horizon, the thoughts of Beethoven, our dreams
by night, the conception of space, our memories, our future, the odor
and the weight of objects, our grief at this moment and thousands and
thousands of other things besides.
Is my soul immortal? Alas! how can I still linger in this ancient,
ingenuous hope? There are millions who, like me, can no longer give
reasonable credence to such an impossible happiness.
But does my soul exist? Every thought bears witness that it does, and
this life of ours too, and the inexplicable life that is all about us.
When Christians speak of the salvation of the soul, they are thinking
of all sorts of assurances and precautions in regard to that future
life which remains the greatest charm of religion and at the same time
its most wonderful weapon.
We can give a humbler but more immediate meaning to this expression.
First of all, not to be ignorant of our own souls!
To think about the soul, to think about it at least once in the
confusion of every crowded day, is indeed the beginning of salvation.
To think with perseverance and respect of the soul, to enrich it
unceasingly, that will be our sanctity.