Every philosophy has given magnificent expression to these immortal
truths. What can we add to the words of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius,
of Christ in regard to the vanity of those riches which alone society
admits to be of value?
But the poets have said to us, “Do not abandon the world, for it
abounds in pure and truly divine joys that will be lost if you do not
harvest them!”
The road that ought to be sweet for us to follow crosses now that of
the Christians, now that of the Stoics. We may stop now at the Garden
of Olives, now at the threshold of that small house without a door,
without furnishings, where the master of Arrien used to live.
Our road will lead us even more often through wild, solitary places, or
to the pillow of some man who sleeps in the earth, or to the smiling
dwelling of some humble friend, or again into the melodious shadow
where the souls of Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach forever dwell.
We shall not struggle with the mass of deluded man to possess the
known, so long as the unknown remains without a master. We shall give
up crude material possession in order to dream all the better of
spiritual possession.
No, we cannot any longer renounce our kingdom when it calls to us, when
for us it sings, hosanna!
And those of us who already have their place in the kingdom of heaven
must not hesitate to demand their share of this world also; for the
world has been given to all men so that each man, with the help of all
the rest, may possess the whole of it.
III
THE POSSESSION OF OTHERS
I
In the exile of the war I have fifteen comrades, and we live side by
side like seamen on the deck of a ship. Everything brings us together:
work, sleep, play, food and danger. Even our quarrels reunite us, for,
in order to quarrel well, you have to know your man: between strangers
disputes have little savor.
I never chose these men for my companions, as I once thought I had a
right to do. They have been given to me like a handful of fruit of
which some is juicy and some green. They have been taken at random,
as if by a drag of that net which respects nothing, from the swarming
species of man. Thanks, therefore, to the blind and divine world which
has thrown the net into the flood!
They are my treasure, my study, and my daily task. They are my purpose,
my horizon, my torment, and my recompense.
Although far from my own people, far from those with whom I have
carried on my life, I could not feel myself destitute, abandoned; the
world is not empty for me since I have these fifteen men to manage,
this cherished problem to ponder, this soil to work over, this vintage
for the winepress.
I accept the gift, the restless opulence, the fifteen glances that open
on fifteen different heavens where there shine neither the same seasons
nor the same stars, those fifteen proud, vindictive souls whom I must
win over and subdue like wild horses.
To be sure, a few of these men are frank, level in temperament, as
plain to the eye as a smooth pebble on the beach; one touches them,
holds them, grasps them in a moment like a big piece of silver in the
hollow of the hand. But so many others are changeable, furtive, so many
others are rough like ore in which only the fissures glisten and betray
the inner nobility.
The more unresponsive and secretive they seem, without any obvious
beauty, the more resolved I find I am to look upon them as a treasure,
to search through them as if they were a soil that is full of wealth.
There are some of them that I love, there are some whom I think that I
do not love. What does it matter! The interest I devote to them is not
in the least dependent on the throbs of my heart. That one who never
speaks and conceals, under his obstinate forehead, two little eyes
of green glass,--certainly he does not naturally arouse my affection.
Nevertheless, how different is the attention with which I regard him
from the curiosity of a scientist watching the stirrings of fish in an
aquarium! It makes me think, that attention, rather of the dizzy joy of
the miser who weighs a gold-piece, the effigy on which doesn’t please
him. Gold, nevertheless!
True! How could I feel bored with these faces turned toward me, with
this choir of human voices singing, each in its own familiar key, yet
blending into the masculine clamor of an orchestra?
Everything they say is precious; less so, however, than what they keep
to themselves. The reasons they give for their actions astonish me
at times; those they do not confess, especially those of which they
themselves are ignorant, always fill me with passionate interest. A
word, fallen from their lips like a piece of paper from an unknown
pocket, arrests me and sets me dreaming for long days. About them
I build up daring and yet fragile hypotheses which they either
obligingly support or destroy with a careless gesture. I always begin
again, delighting in it; it is my recreation. I enjoy finding that my
hypotheses are right, for that satisfies my pride; I enjoy finding I am
wrong, for that reveals to me leafy depths in my park that are still
unexplored.
And then I know that only a small part of their nature is involved
in our intercourse. The rest branches off, ramifies out into the
perspectives of the world. I think of it as of that side of the moon
which men will never see. I reconstruct with a pious, a burning
patience that life of theirs which is outside this, their true life,
endlessly complicated, linked by a thousand tentacles with a thousand
other unknown lives. So must Cuvier’s mind have wandered as he turned
and returned a fossil tooth, the only vestige of some vast, unknown
organism.
There is all this in people, and then there is the past that each one
has, his own past, his ancestors, the prodigious combination of actions
and of souls of which he is the result. And there is his future, the
unexplored desert toward which he stretches out anxious tentacles, and
into which I dare to venture, I, the stranger, with trembling heart,
the tiny lantern in my hand.
These are my riches today. They are inalienable: a man may flee from an
indiscretion, he cannot escape the grip of contemplation and love. Even
if he desired it, his very struggles would reveal his movements, betray
the deepest secrets of his being, deliver him over bound hand and foot.
As for myself, eager to hoard up my treasure, I give myself up without
a struggle. Rich in others, I yield myself into their hands. And if, in
spite of myself, I attempt some evasion, am I not sure to render the
prey all the more desirable, all the more beautiful?