It is because every fragment of the earth is a source of happiness that
men ceaselessly dream of winning that source for their own profit.
They do not wish to have all humanity refresh itself, plunge its
feverish face and lips in the cool waters.
Once the springs were the delight and the wealth of whole peoples;
they were conducted magnificently along majestically proportioned
aqueducts; their liquid opulence, crossing valleys and mountains,
entered the cities with a great outburst of architectural joy; it shone
and sparkled in the sunlight from a thousand embellished apertures
before it went to bathe and nourish the people.
The statues of the gods watched over this treasure.
Today, the most beautiful springs are guarded by railings; one goes to
a wicket and pays in order to drink there.
In the same way, all the springs of joy seem to have been sequestered
for the profit of a few people.
This is not always for the sake of gain. In most cases it is simply for
exclusiveness. The man who owns something capable of giving joy naïvely
imagines that he will be happier if he is the only one to drink from
this inexhaustible breast. He becomes infatuated with it and thinks of
nothing but how to shut up his treasure. He puts up a wall and provides
it with fragments of sharp glass, so that the wall may show its teeth,
so that it may be not only defensive but, in some sense, offensive. At
times, yawning with ennui in the very midst of his material prosperity,
he makes an opening in the wall, only to correct this imprudence with
a ditch; and from behind this he seems to say, “Now see how rich I
am; look and proclaim it in a loud voice, you who pass by, for I am
beginning not to be so sure of it myself.”
To shut up a picture, a beautiful tree, a sumptuous tapestry for one’s
own exclusive benefit is, after all, only a trifling folly; but there
are some who undertake to capture a river, a mountain, a horizon, the
sea.
A few years ago, I visited the shore of the Mediterranean, between
Cannes and Menton. I was struck by a strange thing: the road that
follows the edge of the sea, at the foot of the hills, through a
thousand natural beauties, continually loses sight of the waves; it
seems as if pushed back, held aside.
People have appropriated the horizon; they have driven their fortune
like a wedge between the divine sea and the road of the common folk.
They wish to be the only ones to possess the ocean, dawn, the gold and
sapphire of moon, the tempests and the thunders of the open sea.
Do not be alarmed, mistaken brothers, do not tremble; we shall not
throw down your walls. Live in peace in your sumptuous prison, our
portion remains so beautiful and so great that we shall never exhaust
it.
Close your gates, you will not shut in the perfume of your shrubbery,
nor all the wind, nor all the sky. You will not imprison the fragrant
odor of your flower-beds. We shall breathe them, as we pass, lovingly,
and continue on our way. We shall go on still further, for we have many
things to acquaint ourselves with, we divine so many, many of them that
a whole life is short in the light of such a destiny. But if it pleases
you to join our vagabond company you will discover, perhaps, the
other side of your own walls, which are hung with flax-weed and wild
geranium. The road that skirts them outside leads to joy also.
And besides, one does not find these ingenuous walls everywhere. The
greed of men has not yet subjected all the beauty of things. You have
snatched up in your fingers a fleeting draught of water: the ocean does
not seem to be aware of it.
You must understand that we really possess nothing by ourselves. Veil,
if you wish, the faces of your women and visit every day the gold in
the depths of your vaults. Exclusiveness yields you no wealth save that
which is dead and unproductive.
But he is truly rich for whom life is a perpetual discovery.