Discovery! It seems as if this word were one of a cluster of magic
keys, one of those keys that make all doors open before our feet.
We know that to possess is to understand, to comprehend. That, in a
supreme sense, is what discovery means.
To understand the world can well be compared to the peaceful, enduring
wealth of the great landowner; to make discoveries is, in addition to
this, to come into sudden, overflowing riches, to have one of those
sudden strokes of fortune which double a man’s capital by a windfall
that seems like an inspiration.
The life of a child who grows up unconstrainedly is a chain of
discoveries, an enriching of each moment, a succession of dazzling
surprises.
I cannot go on without thinking of the beautiful letter I received
today about my little boy; it said: “Your son knows how to find
extraordinary riches, inexhaustible treasures, even in the barrenest
fields, and when I set him on the grass, I cannot guess the things
he is going to bring out of it. He has an admirable appreciation of
the different kinds of soil; if he finds sand he rolls in it, buries
himself in it, grabs up handfuls and flings them delightedly over his
hair. Yesterday he discovered a molehole, and you cannot imagine all
the pleasure he took in it. He also knows the joys of a slope which
one can descend on one’s feet, or head over heels, or by rolling, and
which is also splendid for somersaults. Every rise of ground interests
him, and I wish you could see him pushing his cart up them. There is
a little ditch where on the edge he likes to lie with his feet at
the bottom and his body pressed tight against the slope. He played
interminably, the other day, on top of a big stone; he kept stroking
it, he had truly found a new pleasure there. And as for me, I find my
wealth in watching him discover all these things.”
It is thus a child of fifteen months gives man lessons in appreciation.
Unfortunately, most systems of education do their best to substitute
hackneyed phrases for the sense of discovery. A series of conventions
are imposed on the child; he ceases to discover and experience the
objects in the world in pinning them down with dry, formal labels by
the help of which he can recognize them. He reduces his moral life
little by little to the dull routine of classifying pins and pegs, and
in this fashion begins the journey to maturity.
Discover! You must discover in order to be rich! You must not be
satisfied to accept the night good-humoredly, to go to sleep after a
day empty of all discovery. There are no small victories, no negligible
discoveries: if you bring back from your day’s journey the memory of
the white cloud of pollen the ripe plantain lets fall, in May, at the
stroke of your switch, it may be little, but your day is not lost. If
you have only encountered on the road the tiny urn of jade which the
moss delightedly balances at the end of its frail stem, it may seem
little, but be patient! Tomorrow will perhaps be more fruitful. If for
the first time you have seen a swarm of bees go by in search of a hive,
or heard the snapping pods of the broom scattering its seeds in the
heat, you have nothing to complain of, and life ought to seem beautiful
to you. If, on that same day, you have also enriched your collection of
humanity with a beautiful or an interesting face, confess that you will
go to sleep upon a treasure.