_Esthetic Morality_.
Perhaps we ought to renounce such distinctions as beautiful and ugly,
good and bad, good and evil, and so on, and consider in life's acts
only the curve of movements. Thus morality and esthetics would blend.
Already men of more than average culture consider the subject of a
painting only to judge whether the painter has submitted to the same
logic the subject of the picture itself, the composition that compasses
it, the color that unites it to the vital milieu. A subject, in art,
may be criticized only in relation to the purpose of the work and the
manner in which it is treated. It might be the same with human acts,
in which case they would be judged only according to their opportunity
and their esthetic curves. One must act,--must be always stirring; life
is a series of movements, the lines of which interlace. This forms a
design. Is it harmonious? That is the whole question; that is all of
morality.
_Another Point of View._
In order to make a system of morality by separating what is good from
what is evil we must have fixed principles, a definite belief,--and
we live in an age of skepticism. Doubtless religion is not true, but
neither is anti-religion true: truth dwells in a perfect indifference.
Governments should restrict themselves to a truly scientific neutrality
and consider all manifestations of intelligence or feeling legitimate,
whatever their nature. The State should be but a visible providence, a
sovereign police that would protect the exercise of all human activity,
opposing only those deeds which could fetter the plenitude of all
liberties, of every kind.
It is here that one must make a distinction, though it is hardly
scientific, between the body and the mind, sensitive matter and the
will. Without a doubt acts directed against bodily sensibility should
be repressed; but the case is not the same with acts against the
intellectual sensibility. Acts called immoral may be prohibited in such
a measure as custom recommends; provocations to immoral acts should be
permitted. The only crime is the crime of violence. It matters little
that I am asked to do something by written or spoken word; the evil
begins only when I am made to do so by force.
_The Word "God."_
Renan loved it, finding it convenient for the connotation of an
entire order of ideas, none of which is easily limited verbally. It
is undefinable; and moreover, if it were defined it would lose all
its value. God is not all that exists; God is all that does not exist.
Therein resides the power and the charm of that mysterious word. God is
tradition, God is legend, God is folklore, God is a fairy-tale, God is
a romance, God is a lie, God is a bell, God is a church window, God is
religion, God is all that is absurd, useless, invisible, intangible,
all that is nothingness and that symbolizes nothingness. God is the
_nihil in tenebris_--(nothing in the darkness)--men have made of him
light, life and love.
_Money_.
It is hard to read without irritation the old pleasantries of the
journalists and the ancient lamentations of socialists upon the worship
of the golden calf. To rail at money, to wax indignant against it, are
equally silly. Money is nothing; its power is purely symbolical. Money
is the sign of liberty. To curse money is to curse liberty,--to curse
life, which is nothing, if it be not free.
Popular simplicity adores money. Look at that poor huckstress: she
makes the sign of the cross with the first coin she takes in during the
morning. A God has come to visit her and bless her. It is a communion
at once mystic and real, in the guise of metal.
Money, which is liberty, is also fecundation. It is the universal sperm
without which human societies would remain but barren wombs. Paganism,
which knew and understood everything, opens to a shower of gold from
on high the conquered thighs of Danaë. That is what we should see
on our coins, instead of a meaningless head, if we were capable of
contemplating without embarrassment that religious tableau.
_Antinomy_
The most interesting thing about man is man as the human animal. Almost
all the rest is folly. As soon as he loses contact with nature, with
primitive nature, man wanders. Yet it is this very divagation that
is called reason, wisdom, morality. And the natural conduct that man
might follow, and which he sometimes does follow, is called unreason,
immorality. But, through a balance of logic, this immorality that we
disparage we make the sole object of our dreams, our desires, our
speeches, our acts, our meditations, our dissertations, our art and our
science.
_The Supernumerary._
Monsieur Tarde, an ingenious and bitter philosopher, has thus defined
life: "The pursuit of the impossible through the useless."
That deserves to endure. It is one of those sentences that one would
like to see engraved in gold upon the marbles at street corners. It is
undeniable that in endowing man with an immortal soul Christianity gave
to life an inestimable worth.
Deprived of the infinite, man has become what he always was: a
supernumerary.
He hardly counts; he forms part of the troupe called Humanity; if
he misses a cue, he is hissed; and if he drops through the trapdoor
another puppet is in readiness to take his place.