If the thoughts of great men no longer cause miracles it is because
they are too little understood, or are misunderstood, or are purposely
distorted. You are mistaken if you think they are powerless because
they are beautiful.
The war, which has crushed such great masses of men, has brought
us face to face with this melancholy evidence, it has enabled us
thoroughly to examine many individuals and to put many experiences
to the proof. It has permitted us to measure the whole humiliation of
moral civilization before that other, the scientific and industrial
civilization which we might still better call practical civilization.
Gifted, serious, good men have said to me, “First of all one has to
live. You can see, in the midst of this hurricane, what would become
of a people weakened by idealism and given over to the works of the
spirit. My son will study chemistry. The coming century will be a
hard one, my son will perhaps never have the time to read Emerson or
acquaint himself with the works of Bach! Too bad! But first of all one
has to live.”
Does it not seem as if error had a dazzling power to seduce us and
overwhelm us? Men are always hoping to conquer it by yielding to its
demands. No one has the courage to turn his own steps away from its
shifting shore. No one, for example, says to me: “The moral culture of
the world is in peril. Mechanical progress monopolizes and swallows up
all human energy. The generous soul of the best men is forgotten, in
exile. Let us, with a common voice, with all our strength, summon it
to come back to us, or let us go and die in exile with it, in an exile
that is noble and pure.”