If the future laws governing labor do not allow enough time for the
cultivation and the flourishing of the soul, a sacred struggle will
become inevitable.
The organizers of the modern world, who have shown themselves powerless
to avert war and did not realize the vanity of our old civilization,
do not yet seem to foresee the urgency of radical changes in the moral
education of the peoples.
They continue to talk to us about the superhuman efforts we must make
in order to redeem their faults.
No one shrinks before these efforts. Society is weary of crime but not
of peaceful tasks. Everyone prepares with joyous energy to take up his
former position and his tools again.
It rests with us all to mitigate the severity of economic conflicts by
working to transform the current idea of happiness.
The possessors of material wealth have, in general, for centuries,
given to those whom they employ and direct so scandalous and basely
immoral an example that they themselves are the principal fomenters of
the attacks which they will henceforth have to undergo.
In the machinery of modern industry, work has lost a great many of its
attractive virtues: all the methods in force tend to diminish the part
played by the soul and the heart, and the workman, imprisoned in an
almost mechanical function, no longer expects from work the personal
satisfaction he once obtained; as a poet has said: “His empty labor is
the fate he fights against.”
Certain American methods have based their theory upon a clever sophism;
they exaggerate the automatic under the pretext of thus cutting short
the length of the work. That is not a happy solution, to cut short the
hours of labor by emptying it of all joy, of all professional interest.
It is better to undertake a long piece of work with relish than to
hurry through a short task with repugnance.
The specialization that is rendered necessary by the very extent
of scientific and industrial activity remains a dangerous thing,
especially among an old race of encyclopedists like ourselves.
However that may be, the peoples consent to yield themselves to the
discretion of the modern world. May the monster leave them some scraps
of a liberty that is still honorable enough for them to think of
cultivating their souls. There will not be lacking men of good will
who will be glad to devote themselves to directing this liberty, to
transforming the meaning and the demands of joy, propagating a culture
which, unlike those old errors, will support education more readily
than instruction,--men who will more often address themselves to the
heart than to the disastrous reason.