They say of curiosity that it was the beginning of science. That is not
praise enough, it sounds rather like an excuse.
What is more human, more touching than this religious reaching out
toward the unknown, this sort of instinct which makes us divine and
attack the mystery?
To take pride in not being curious! One might as well take pride in
some ridiculous infirmity. It is true that even that is in the order of
things normal, and that vanity finds its nourishment where it can.
Doubtless there is a sort of curiosity which is both weak and cowardly.
It is that of men who dare not remain alone a moment face to face with
themselves; they take refuge in loquacity and in reading the daily
newspapers. Their fashion of interesting themselves in everything that
goes on is a confession that they are unable to become interested in
anything eternal. They depend as if for nourishment on that noise which
those who have nothing to say are always making. They are like children
who cannot amuse themselves alone, or like stupid monarchs who fear
nothing so much as silence and their own thoughts, the emptiness of
their own thoughts!
And then there are the easy-going people. They want to know everything,
the number of your maternal aunt’s children, the price of the furniture
and the wages of the servants. They want to know everything and they
will never know anything. Their life is spent in forced smiles and in
gracefully holding a cup of tea.
Their souls contain vast lists of names, dates and other miserable
things. They go through life like beasts of burden, weighed down under
loads that have no value.
There are maniacs, too, perverts, freaks, people that are full of
curiosity about a postage stamp, the handle of an umbrella; but of
these I dare not say anything, for I remember an old and very wise
master who used to say to us with a smile: “You who are entering upon
scientific careers must begin right away to think about collections,
even if you have to collect boxes of matches.”
To tell the truth, is it our business to be wise, to be learned?
Hardly! It is our business to be rich.
Well, then, there are not two kinds of curiosity. Let us leave out of
the question all those dull stupidities we dare to call by this name.
The curious man seems strangely uninterested in that which excites
the loquacity of trivial souls. He does not trouble himself to find
out the year in which a house was built, or the honors accorded to
the architect; he dreams in secret of the tastes, the passions of
the man who had that little, low window pierced on the north side and
that black tree with its twisted branches planted at the edge of the
pond. He does not ask a young woman the name of her dressmaker, but
trembles at the thought of understanding what made her choose that
disturbing dress to wear this particular day. He does not question his
mistress about her opinion of him, but seeks passionately to understand
the opinion he has at this moment of her. He does not hasten to ask
his travelling companions about their professions and the political
opinions they uphold, because, as he watches their faces, he is
studying discreetly and sympathetically the meaning of the little
wrinkle that moves between their brows, or the significance of a
glance, its source and its object. He does not solicit confidences, he
receives them almost without wishing to; they come naturally to him; he
is their sure and deep receptacle.
Curious about all this vast world, he seems especially concerned with
its image in himself. He bears his curiosity like a sacred gift and
exercises it, or rather honors it, as one would perform the rites of a
cult.
Do not say you would not wish to be that man. You who feel pride in
possessing yourself of a secret, in drawing out a confession, in
meriting the confidence of another man, must realize that it is a
marvelous fortune to be thus the tenderly imperious confidant who
cannot be denied, though often the rest of the world knows nothing of
it. And it is possible for you, even if you cannot become such a man
at once, at least to labor to become one. Begin, with this in view,
to deliver yourself from your little servile curiosities. Let us work
together for this future. Let us enter so deeply into ourselves that
people will say of us, “That man is not curious about anything.” From
that moment we shall have begun to chant the hymn of the great, the
divine curiosity.