The greatest of all joys is to give happiness, and those who do not
know it have everything to learn about life. The annals of humanity
abound with illustrious deeds aptly proving that generosity enriches
first of all those who practise it.
Not to mention any celebrated instance, I shall tell you one simple
little tale. It is of the truth I live on, my daily bread.
Just now, not far from me, there is a young English soldier from the
neighborhood of York who is so severely wounded in the lower part of
the stomach that the natural functions of the body have been completely
upset and he has been reduced to a state of terrible suffering.
And yet, when I went to see him this morning, this boy gave me an
extraordinary smile, his very first, a smile full of delicacy and hope,
a smile of resurrection.
Presently I learned the cause of this great joy. The dying man pulled
from under his pillow a cigarette he had hidden there, which he had
secretly saved for me and now gave me.
V
There are many who preach an unpretentious life and the sweetness
of possessing a little garden. The most magnificent of gardens is
insignificant compared with this world in which nothing is refused
us. Accepting the little garden we should have the air of those
dispossessed kings who lose an empire to be ironically dowered with a
small island.
If we find it pleasant to employ our muscles in digging the earth,
there are a thousand spots where we can easily practise this wholesome
and fruitful exercise. But we shall never really possess a single clod
of earth because a legal deed has declared that it belongs exclusively
to us. The world itself! Our love demands the whole world; the rocks,
the clouds, the great trees along the highway, the darting flight of
birds, receding into the evening, the rustling verdure high above that
wall that vainly strives to shut in the private property of someone
else, the shining glory of those flowers we glimpse through the iron
railings of a park, and even that very wall and railing themselves.
According to the stretch of our wings, the scope of our desires, we
shall possess whatever our hands touch with ardor and respect, whatever
delights our eyes from the summits of mountains, whatever our thoughts
bring back from their travels through legendary lands.
To possess the world is purely a question of the intensity of our
understanding of it. One does not possess things on their surfaces but
in their depths; but the spirit alone can penetrate into the depths,
and for the spirit there is no barrier.
Many men to whom the law allows the gross, official possession of a
statue, a gem, a beautiful horse or a province wear themselves out
fulfilling a rôle to which no human being has received a call. Every
moment they perceive with bitterness that men who have no legal title
whatever to these material goods draw from them a delight that is
superior to the enjoyment they themselves get from them as absolute
owners. They often find, in this way, that a friend appreciates their
beautiful pictures better than they do, that a groom is a better judge
of their own stables, that a passer-by draws out of “their landscape” a
purer joy than theirs and more original ideas. They take their revenge
by obstinately confusing the usage of a thing with its possession.
Jesus said that the rich man renounced the kingdom of God. He renounces
many other things as well. For if he shuts himself up within his proud
walls, he abandons the marvelous universe for a small fragment of it;
and if he is actually curious about the universe, if he appreciates
its significance, how can he consent without guilt to hide a portion of
it away from the contemplation of others?
In order to express the gross and exclusive possession of things
society has invented various words and phrases that betray the weak
efforts of men to appropriate for themselves, in spite of everything,
in spite of the laws of love, the riches that remain the prerogative of
all. They speak, for example, of “disposing of a piece of property,”
which means having it subject to our pleasure, being able to do as
we choose with it. The sacrilegious vanity of this view of the world
gives the possessor, as his supreme right, the power to destroy his
own treasure. He could not, indeed, have a greater right than that.
But what sort of desperate possession is it, I ask, that considers the
destruction of the object possessed as the supreme manifestation of
power?
The world has long known and still knows slavery. Lords and masters
claimed the extravagant right of disposing of other human beings.
They all insisted, as a mark of authority, on their right of dealing
death to their slaves. But truly, what was the power of these despots
compared with the deep, sensitive, voluntary bond that united Plato to
Socrates, or John to Christ?
Epictetus suffered at the hands of Epaphroditus. For all that,
Epaphroditus was not able to prevent his slave from reigning, through
his thought, over the centuries. Epaphroditus’ right of possession
seems to us ridiculous and shameful. Who can fairly envy him when so
many centuries have passed judgement on him?