It seems childish and paradoxical to oppose to all the concrete and
formidable realities that are considered as the hereditary wealth of
mankind an almost purely ideal world of joys that have no price, that
remain outside all our bargainings, that are unstable, often fugitive,
and always relative in appearance, whenever we put them to the test.
Yet they alone are absolute, they alone are true. Where they are
lacking there may be a place for amusement, there is no place for true
happiness. They alone are capable of assuring the salvation of the
soul. We ought to labor passionately to find them, to amass them as the
veritable treasures of humanity.
The future we are permitted to glimpse seems the very negation of
happiness and the ruin of the soul.
If this is true, we must examine it with open minds and then, with all
our strength, refuse it.
Just this moment, when the struggle for mastery goes on, to the great
peril of the soul, among the peoples, just this moment I choose
for saying: “Let us think of the salvation of our souls.” And this
salvation is not a matter of the future but of the present hour. Let
us recognize the existence of the soul; it is thus that we shall save
it. Let us give it the freedom of the city in a world where everything
conspires to silence or destroy it. If it is true that this withdraws
us from that struggle for existence, the clamor of which assails our
ears, well, even so, I believe it is better to die than to remain in a
universe from which the soul is banished. But we shall have occasion to
speak more than once of this.
Let us not forget that happiness is our one aim. Happiness is, above
all, a thing of the spirit, and we shall only deserve it at the price
of the honors we render to the noblest part of our being.