Meanwhile, the little ball spins on the cylinder, and I reflect upon all
that is destroyed by the formidable power conferred on it through a
monstrous compact. Each time that it thus starts in search of the
mysterious answer, it annihilates all around it the last essential
remnants of our social morality: I mean, the value of money. To abolish
the value of money and substitute for it a higher ideal would be an
admirable achievement; but to abolish it and leave in its place simply
nothing is, I conceive, one of the gravest crimes that can be committed
against our scheme of evolution. If we look at it from a certain point
of view and purify it of its incidental vices, money is essentially a
very worthy symbol: it represents human effort and labour; it is, for
the most part, the fruit of laudable sacrifice and noble toil. Whereas
here, this symbol, one of the last that was left to us, is daily
subjected to public mockery. Suddenly, at the caprice of a little thing
as insignificant as a child's toy, ten years of striving, of
conscientious thought, of tasks patiently endured lose all importance.
If this hideous phenomenon were not isolated on this one rock, no social
organization but would have fallen victim to the injury spreading from
it. Even now, in its leprous isolation, this devastating influence makes
itself felt at a distance that never could have been estimated. We feel
that this influence, so inevitable, so malevolent and so profound, is
such that, when we leave this cursed palace where gold clinks
incessantly against the human conscience, we wonder how it is that the
everyday life goes on, that patient gardeners consent to keep up the
flower-beds in front of the fatal building, that wretched guardians can
be found to watch over its precincts for a contemptible wage and that a
poor little old woman, at the bottom of its marble stairs, amid the
coming and going of lucky or ruined gamblers, for years persists in
earning a laborious livelihood by selling pennyworths of oranges,
almonds, nuts and matches to the passers-by.
V
While we are making these reflections, the ivory ball slackens its
course and begins to hop like a noisy insect over the thirty-seven
compartments that allure it. This is the irrevocable judgment. O strange
infirmity of our eyes, our ears and that brain of which we are so proud!
O strange secrets of the most elementary laws of this world! From the
second at which the ball was set in motion to the second at which it
falls into the fateful hole, on the battle-field three yards long, in
this childish and mocking form, the mystery of the Universe inflicts a
symbolical, incessant and disheartening defeat upon human power and
reason. Collect around this table all the wise men, all the divines, all
the seers, all the sages, all the prophets, all the saints, all the
wonder-workers, all the mathematicians, all the geniuses of every time
and every country; ask them to search their reason, their soul, their
knowledge, their Heaven for the number so close at hand, the number
already almost part of the present at which the little ball will end its
race; beg them, so that they may foretell that number to us, to invoke
their gods that know all, their thoughts that govern the nations and
aspire to penetrate the worlds: all their efforts will break against
this brief puzzle which a child could take in its hand and which no
longer fills the smallest moment's space. No one has been able to do it,
no one will ever do it. And all the strength, all the certainty of the
"bank," which is the impassive, stubborn, determined and ever-victorious
ally of the rhythmical and absolute wisdom of Chance, lies solely in the
establishment of man's powerlessness to foresee, were it but for the
third of a second, that which is about to happen before his eyes. If, in
the span of nearly fifty years during which these formidable experiments
have been made on this flower-clad rock, one single being had been found
who, in the course of an afternoon, had torn the veil of mystery that
covers, at each throw, the tiny future of the tiny ball, the bank would
have been broken, the undertaking wrecked. But that abnormal being has
not appeared; and the bank well knows that he will never come to sit at
one of its tables. We see, therefore, how, in spite of all his pride and
all his hopes, man knows that he can know nothing.