I
Love contains no complete and lasting happiness save in the transparent
atmosphere of perfect sincerity. Until we attain this sincerity, our
love is but an experiment: we live in expectation, and our words and
kisses are only provisional. But sincerity is not possible except
between lofty and trained consciences. Moreover, it is not enough that
the consciences should be that: if sincerity is to become natural and
essential, this is requisite besides, that the consciences shall be
almost equal, of the same extent, of the same quality, and that the love
that unites them shall be deep-laid. And thus it is that the lives glide
away of so many men who never meet the soul with which they could have
been sincere.
But it is impossible to be sincere with others before learning to be
sincere with one's self. Sincerity is only the consciousness and
analysis of the motives of all life's actions. It is the expression of
this consciousness that one is able, later to lay before the eyes of the
being with whom one is seeking the happiness of sincerity.
Thus understood, sincerity's aim is not to lead to moral perfection. It
leads elsewhere, higher if we will: in any case to more human and more
fertile regions. The perfection of a character, as we generally
understand it, is too often but an unproductive abstention, a sort of
ataraxy, an abatement of instinctive life which is, when all is said,
the one source of all the other lives that we succeed in organizing
within us. This perfection tends to suppress our too ardent desires:
ambition, pride, vanity, egoism, the craving for enjoyment, in short,
all the human passions, that is to say, all that constitutes our
primitive vital force, the very groundwork of our energy of existence,
which nothing can replace. If we stifle within ourselves all the
manifestations of life, to substitute for them merely the contemplation
of their defeat, soon we shall have nothing left to contemplate.
Wherefore, it is not of importance to have no more passions, vices or
faults: that is impossible, so long as one is a man in the midst of men,
since we make the mistake to describe as passion, vice or fault that
which is the very basis of human nature. But it is of importance to
recognize, in their details and in their secrets, those which we possess
and to watch them at work from a standpoint so high that we may look
upon them without fearing lest they should overthrow us or escape from
our control to go and heedlessly to harm us or those around us.
So soon as, from that stand-point, we see our instincts, even the lowest
and the most selfish, at work, provided that we are not wilfully
wicked--and it is difficult to be that when our intelligence has
acquired the lucidity and the force which this faculty of observation
implies--so soon as we see them thus at work, they become harmless, like
children under their parents' eyes. We can even lose sight of them,
forget to watch them for a time; they will commit no serious misdeeds;
for the obligation that lies upon them to repair the evil which they
have done renders them naturally circumspect and soon makes them lose
the habit of doing harm.