GEORGES DUHAMEL: POET, PACIFIST, AND PHYSICIAN
The world is thronged with people who are busying themselves with
world ordering. They may be divided into two great groups: those who
believe that it is to be brought about by revolution; and those who are
convinced that it is to be accomplished by following the instructions
given by the Master to the lawyer who asked the question: “Which is
_the_ great commandment in the law?” The former are called Bolshevists;
the latter Pacifists; and both terms are habitually used derisively.
Amongst the latter there are few more conspicuous in France than
Georges Duhamel, a physician by profession, a littérateur by choice,
who at thirty-eight years of age finds himself in a commanding position
in French letters.
I have recently had the opportunity of an interview with this brilliant
young man, and it occurs to me to present a summary of his aspirations
and an estimate of his accomplishments.
His history is brief. Early success, like a happy country, does not
furnish history. He was born in Paris in 1884, the son of a physician
and the grandson of a farmer. This evolution from farmer to littérateur
in three generations Duhamel says is common in France, indeed in all
Central Europe. His tastes seem to have been largely influenced, if
not formed, by the setting and atmosphere with which his father's
profession surrounded his early life. Until he was mobilised in 1914
Duhamel had not practised medicine. Even as a youth he had experienced
the literary urge and felt that he would eventually succumb to it. He,
however, devoted himself to the sciences and to medicine in the firm
belief that such study provides the best preparation for the vocation
of literature. In this M. Duhamel is in full accord with another famous
theoretical world orderer, Mr. H. G. Wells, but in disagreement with a
practical one, Mr. Charles E. Hughes.
“One does not learn life from letters, but from life, through seeing
suffering and death,” said he when asked to speak of the factors that
influenced him to abandon medicine for letters.
In the midst of his studies as a youth he had what he now calls rather
a strange adventure.
“I spent much time in the society of friends: writers, painters
and sculptors. All of us were seized with a strong desire to
shrink from society as it was constituted. Although we were not
all Fourierites, we decided to form a phalanstery in which we
could live a community life, each one taking part in the work
and in the joy of living in an atmosphere adapted to our tastes
and our professions. We agreed to make our living by means of
manual work, and to abolish the relation of master and servant.
We decided to adopt the trade of typography, which would permit
us to advance our art. Through mutual economies we bought a
printing press and our first books were published by 'L'Abbaye
de Creteil,' as our little publishing house was called. The
phalanstery was disbanded for financial reasons, but we had a
taste of an agreeable life, independent, oftentimes difficult,
but in many respects quite ideal.”
When asked about his earliest literary productions and why he essayed
poetry rather than prose, he replied,
“Generally speaking, all writers begin with poetry and gradually
forsake metre. Our little group wanted to initiate a great
literary epoch and we believed that this could be done only by
creating an atmosphere favourable to intellectual work.”
He might have borrowed Socrates' reply when Cebes asked the same
question: “For I reflect that a man who means to be a poet has to use
fiction and not facts for his poems.” M. Duhamel's training had been in
facts, and his greatest success in letters has been in the recording
of facts. His smallest success has been in establishing postulates
based upon them.
[Illustration: GEORGES DUHAMEL] From a drawing by _Ivan Opffer_ in _THE
BOOKMAN._
In 1909 M. Duhamel received his degree in medicine and shortly after
appeared the four plays which, with his poetry, “Des Légendes, des
Batailles,” a collection of verse published by “L'Abbaye” in 1907;
“L'Homme en Tête,” in 1909; “Selon ma Loi,” in 1910; and “Compagnons,”
in 1912, gave him a definite place in the literary hierarchy. These
plays were “La Lumière,” which appeared in 1911; “Dans l'Ombre des
Statues,” in 1912; “Le Combat,” a symbolic drama in _vers libres_, in
1912; and “L'Œuvre des Athlètes” in 1920. All of these were produced on
the Paris stage and all save the last have appeared in translations by
Sasha Best in _Poet Lore_, Boston, in 1914 and 1915.
These dramas, as well as his early poetry, show the influence of Walt
Whitman. His message is conveyed through the medium of symbolism, his
method being to create types rather than individual studies, and his
purpose to bring art closer to the masses. The result, as might have
been expected, is drama of no great popularity.
Almost simultaneously with his work as poet and dramatist M. Duhamel
achieved prominence as a critic. For some years he was critic of
poetry for _Le Mercure de France_, and his articles contributed to
that publication were collected in book form in 1914 under the title
of “Les Poètes et la Poésie.” His earliest critical work, however, was
a collaboration with M. Charles Vildrac, called “Mots sur la Technique
Poétique.” “Propos Critique,” published in 1912, is largely devoted to
comments on the efforts of the younger and, at that time, comparatively
unknown writers, and it is of special interest that many of these
writers are now famous.
“Paul Claudel: le philosophe--le poète--l'ecrivain--le dramaturge,”
published in 1913, is considered by some of Duhamel's admirers as the
best of his critical works, marked as it is by the same gifts of
analysis and charm of style which distinguished his briefer critical
writings.
It is, however, chiefly of his work since the beginning of the war, and
the direction which his ideas and aims have taken under the influence
of the war, that this article is concerned.
When the war broke out it found Georges Duhamel--then about thirty
years of age--intent upon his literary work: poetry, criticism,
interpretation, which had put him in the first rank of littérateurs of
his country. Mobilised in the Medical Corps he first went to Verdun and
found himself in the thick of the carnage; but he was soon transferred
to the Marne where in the comparative quiet of a hospital he was able
to make the observations and write the reflections which have carried
his name throughout the civilised world. During the four years of the
war he produced four remarkable volumes: “Vie des Martyrs” (The New
Book of Martyrs), “Civilisation,” “Possession du Monde” (The Heart's
Domain), and “Entretiens dans le Tumulte” (Interviews in the Tumult),
four of the most noteworthy and important books inspired by the war.
Plunged at once into the great war hopper whose purpose was to reduce
all human material to a homogeneous mass that would furnish energy for
the war machine, Duhamel preserved his perspective and his individual
outlook both upon the war and upon life. Nothing illustrates this so
strikingly as some of his stories in “Civilisation,” gathered from
scenes with which he came into contact after he had become a seasoned
soldier.
No stronger proof is needed of the essential wholesomeness and strength
of Duhamel's make-up than the fact that while these stories, and those
of “Vie des Martyrs,” were inspired by the horrors of the war, they do
not depict horrors, nor do they create an atmosphere of horror. It is
not the picture of healthy men in the flower of youth, in the vigour
of virility fed to the war machine and left lacerated and broken,
that Duhamel impresses upon the imaginations of his readers. It was
thus that he had seen them in the first days of the siege of Verdun,
in an improvised ambulance where from minute to minute new torments
developed to increase their previous torments, while the fragile roof
over their heads became a great resounding board for the projectiles
of the siegers and the assieged. He had, however, the vision to see
them in another light, and he was filled with pity and admiration for
the French poilu. It is these two emotions, rather than horror, which
make the atmosphere and colour of the two books of war stories. He
sensed the significance of pain and saw the reactions of strong men to
suffering. He saw man in his agony give the lie to the most misleading
of all statements: that man is born equal. For neither in living nor in
dying is there equality. Men are equal, we trust, before God, and they
are alleged to be equal before the law, but after that equality of man
does not exist.
It is this book particularly that makes Duhamel the interpreter of
the poor, the obscure, the stupid, the inarticulate. With an unerring
intuition he reaches the soul. His sympathies are so large, his
understanding so comprehensive, and his reflection of them so complete,
that his readers suffer with the suffering. It seems impossible to
depict the sufferings of these poor martyrs, sent like droves of cattle
to be struck down for what purpose they knew not, more accurately and
convincingly than he does. With the reader's sympathy thus awakened,
one wonders that the individual can be deprived of his own right to
judge whether the cause is great enough for him to lay down his all; to
be crushed by the chariots of the god of war.
M. Duhamel, in “Vie des Martyrs,” has succeeded in making his martyrs
immortal. To him has been given in a superlative degree that seeing
eye, that understanding heart, that power of vision which, perhaps more
than any other gift, enriches life, since it enables the fortunate
possessor to rid himself of the trammels of his own narrow existence
and live the lives of many.
He has made a contribution to behaviouristic psychology in these little
stories, or better said sketches from life, that will endure. He has
been able to convey to unenlightened man the difference between the
_bon_ and the _mauvais blessé_ and to show that it is soul difference
as well as bodily difference. He has portrayed in simple colours the
desire to live, and the determination to live, factors which physicians
know are most important in forecasting the chances of recovery of every
sick man. And with it all there is tenderness, which the author has had
the power to convey through delicacy of style that makes prose poetry
of much of his narrative of the thoughts, aspirations, sentiments, and
plans of individual men who, from their appearance and position, are
the most commonplace of the commonplace. There is no anger, violence,
hatred, or despair in any of his pictures. There is sometimes irony,
but it is of so gentle a nature that it strengthens the impression of
sympathy with his characters, rather than suggesting judgment of them.
“A human being suffers always in his flesh alone, and that is why
war is possible,” says M. Duhamel in “Civilisation.” This is one of
those marvellous epitomes of human conduct, of which he has framed
many. It is vouchsafed to but few to understand and suffer another's
pain. To the majority of mankind it is denied. Were it not so, the
fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind would displace greed.
There are so many remarkable features of M. Duhamel's war books, such,
for instance, as what may be called the thesis of “Vie des Martyrs”:
that men suffer after their own image and in their own loneliness; or
of “Civilisation”: that consciousness has outrun life; that it has
created for itself reactions and inhibitions so intricate and profound
that they cannot be tolerated by life, that I was keen to learn how
these attitudes had developed. When questioned, this is what he said:
“I am forced to divide things in the way practiced in the
sciences; that is to say, not to confuse the study of facts with
conclusions drawn from them. In these two books I showed as
faithfully as I could the life and sufferings of soldiers during
the war. In the latter two (“The Heart's Domain” and “Interviews
in the Tumult”) I drew conclusions from the facts established
in the first two. This procedure seemed to me the best way to
handle anti-war propaganda. The weakness of most books results
from the fact that the idea or subject is confused with other,
regrettably often sentimental, considerations. The procedure
employed in the sciences seems to be more orderly, and therefore
more convincing for the exposition of my ideas. These books
awoke a great echo, because they corresponded closely to the
state of mind of sensible men who are bent on doing everything
to make war impossible. Because of this I was looked upon as
a Pacifist, and I regard this as an honour. I have never been
politically active nor do I belong to any political group.
However I am a Pacifist and an Internationalist. I believe that
it is only the individual that can be an Internationalist.
A nation will never be Internationalist for the reason that
Pacifism and Internationalism are indissolubly bound up with
individualism.”
M. Duhamel's work cannot, therefore, be considered solely in the light
of its literary qualities. By his own admission he is a writer with a
purpose, and this purpose is the suppression of war. In the interview
he stated that this purpose fills all of his work and “will be, I
believe, the axis of my work all my life.”
Regarding the four war books in this light, a sincere critic can hardly
escape the conviction that the author has accomplished the first part
of his task with immeasurably greater success than the latter part. Of
the convincing appeal of the two books which aim only to present vivid
and truthful pictures of the sufferings of the soldiers during the war
there can be no question. But of the author's power as a propagandist
against war, as expressed in the two latter books, it is by no means
easy to form so satisfactory an estimate.
Duhamel does not believe that the war developed a _modus vivendi_ for
the world. He thinks it left us where it found us, only exhausted.
Unless something is devised while this exhaustion is being overcome,
the conflict will be taken up again. He believes that a revolution is
necessary, but not a revolution in the sense of the term that applies
to the affairs of Russia or Ireland.
When Duhamel is read in the light of history, especially of the last
one hundred and twenty-five years, one is less hopeful than if he were
ignorant of history. If any _ex cathedra_ statement is justifiable
it would seem to be this: the world war flowed more or less directly
from the revolutionary movement which began with the dissemination of
the doctrine of the French philosophers, especially Rousseau, toward
the end of the Eighteenth Century. His discourse “On the Origin of
Inequality Amongst Men” is the fountainhead of modern socialism and the
source from which the ferment that brought about the world revolution
emanated. Rousseau's thesis was that civilisation had proven itself to
be the curse of humanity and that man in his primitive state was free
and happy.
“The first time he knew unhappiness was when convention stepped
in and said 'you must not do this and you must not do that,' and
the State stepped in and said 'this is private property.' The
first man who bethought himself of saying 'this is mine,' and
found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder
of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what
miseries and horrors would he have spared the human race who,
snatching away the spade and filling in the ditches, had cried
out to his fellows: 'beware of listening to this impostor; you
are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to
all and the earth to no one.'”
It was the dissemination of this doctrine and the writings of Voltaire
which led to the “Feast of Reason,” and the publication of the
“Encyclopédie” that led to the world volcanic eruption of 1789, which
had its repetition in 1914.
It seems that most of these ideas were to be found in the writings of
Adam Weishaupt, an apostate Catholic, who founded the secret society
known as the “Illiminati” in 1776. It is interesting to compare some of
his statements with Duhamel's aspirations.
“When men united themselves into nations, national love took the
place of universal love. With the division of the globe into
countries benevolence restricted itself behind boundaries that
it was never again to transgress. It became a virtue to spread
out at the expense of those who did not happen to be under our
dominion. In order to attain this goal it became permissible to
despise foreigners and to deceive and offend them. This virtue
was called patriotism. Patriotism gave birth to localism, to
the family spirit, and finally to egoism. Thus the origin of
states or governments of civil society was the seed of discord
and patriotism found its punishment in itself. Do away with this
love of country, and men will once more learn to know and love
each other as men; there will be no more partiality; the ties
between hearts will unroll and extend.”
Duhamel wants to develop this relationship between men, but he wants to
do it in a very different way.
This moral revolution will be accomplished when men love one another,
and when they reward good for evil. Even though this had not been
shouted from the housetops and whispered through the lattice, in
every tongue and in every clime for the past twenty centuries, we
should still feel that M. Duhamel is in error, for these precepts are
at variance with the teachings of biology, the science for which M.
Duhamel has so much respect. You might just as well ask a man who is
drowning not to struggle as to ask a man to return good for evil--that
is unless he is doing it as a stunt, an artefact, or in redemption of
the promise to be saved. It is against nature. First teach him to put a
new valuation on life and to get new standards of what makes life worth
living. Then M. Duhamel will have a foundation to build upon.
That M. Duhamel is no less earnest than sincere in his purpose is
proved by his lectures through Europe during the last few years, as
protagonist for the suppression of war; and also by the fact that
he was one of the co-founders of “Clarté,” so named for the book by
Barbusse, which is a group of men who preach anti-militarism, the
intellectual solidarity of nations, and the social equality of all
citizens.
“Possession du Monde” is by virtue of its title a frank avowal of
its aim to set forth the author's idea of finding some satisfactory
substitute for the world possession for which the war was fought. It is
the effort of a wholesome, buoyant, sympathetic man, after having been
brought into contact with the horrors of the war, to find a substitute
for orthodox religion; the expression of an emotionally religious man
without a creed. M. Duhamel, who was brought up a Catholic, lost all
religion, he said, when he was fifteen years old.
The panacea which Duhamel offers in this book for human suffering
and world ills is the conscious striving for happiness by means of a
sort of “culture of the soul.” He puts a personal construction upon
happiness and holds that it is and should be the object of all humanity
and of the whole world of living things. He quotes Maeterlinck to the
effect that “As man is created for health, so was man created for
happiness.” This soul culture is rather an attitude of feeling toward
things than an attitude of thought. There is no attempt to think out
any of the problems which have puzzled men for ages. Neither is there
any denying of them. He simply says substantially: I am a practical
man. Of course I take things as they are--or as they seem to be--but I
take the best that is in them. I take the sunshine, the flowers, the
wisdom of the ages, the art that has come down to us, the science,
human love, the fine qualities of friendship, work, play, my sorrows
and adversities, even religion--but I take only what is good out
of them all; and I take that temperately, sanely, according to the
limitations which nature and circumstances have imposed. And I am
happy. You can do likewise and you can be happy.
But can I take poverty and want, and particularly can I take them with
equanimity while my neighbour or brother is swaggering with riches,
some of which he has robbed me because he is stronger or cleverer than
I? Duhamel's formula for achieving happiness, as well as his conception
of what constitutes happiness, only fits the average man, and it has
been proven countless thousands of times that there is no such person.
It is sufficient, perhaps, for people who feel normally and do not
think for themselves. So it may be sufficient for the present for a
mass of people who want to be led--if they are pious and healthy.
But how about the people who are different, or who are not healthy,
or who think they are safer custodians of wealth and power than their
so-called brothers? It brings no help to the people who are tortured
by an insistent need to think things out for themselves, or else to
find something which will answer their questions as to the why. Nor
does it tell those who are handicapped, physically, mentally, or even
temperamentally, how they can overcome their handicaps so as to, as it
were, extract the honey from the flowers. The world is full of people
with all degrees of unusualness and abnormality. One may ignore them,
but no scheme of things can deny them. Duhamel uses them by preference
as a basis for his fiction.
In his conception of happiness Duhamel reads himself and his own
emotions into all things. He avers that the algæ growing in a tank of
water with nothing but a few grains of dust and sunlight are happy
because they subsist and work out their humble joy. Has any sentient
soul told him he was happy under parallel circumstances? That is the
question. He reads his own philosophy into the algæ. To him to be
living as nature intended one to live is to be happy. But who can say?
Just here I am reminded of a quotation from Anatole France of which
Duhamel makes use in this book: “Men have cut each others' throats
over the meaning of a word.” People might argue forever over the
meaning of the word “happiness” and never get anywhere.
Duhamel says that happiness is the ultimate end of life and that
religion is the search for happiness in a life to come after this.
Everybody wants to be happy in this life and some people expect to
be happy in a life after this--of these two assertions there can be
no doubt. But Duhamel says there is no life after this, and that the
sole object of life is to be happy in this world. He does, however,
speak of “saving the soul,” and he implies his belief in God. He says
substantially that the plants are happy because they are fulfilling
their destiny, or doing what God meant them to do; and implies that man
will be happy if he does the same. Very likely. But shall he strive to
fulfill his destiny--to do what God meant him to do--merely in order
to be happy? Or shall he strive to fulfill his destiny--and happiness
will follow incidentally? Which should be his conscious end, happiness
or the fulfilment of his destiny? Most religious people would say the
latter. Duhamel says the former. But, for working purposes they are
about the same, except that, for people who are at all temperamental
or who meet with many discouragements, it is frequently difficult to
strive for a happiness which seems elusive. Whereas, such people, if
they are spiritually minded, can always find a stimulus in trying to do
what they were intended to do. And if they believe in God the stimulus
becomes greater. And if they can believe that the soul grows through
every honest effort--that nothing is ever lost, whether the result
appears to be success or failure--and that the limits of its growth
are not bounded by what their senses can tell them in this life, their
capacity for striving becomes sometimes amazing. How else account for
the man who expends ten times the effort in playing a losing game that
he would have spent in one that promised an easy success?
That the soul will find its greatest happiness in the contemplation
of itself, is Duhamel's belief. “He is the happiest man who best
understands his happiness; for he is of all men most fully aware that
it is only the lofty idea, the untiring courageous human idea, that
separates gladness from sorrow,” he quotes from Maeterlinck. A man
should think about his soul at least once every day. But it would
be safe to say that for one man who finds happiness in a life of
contemplation ten find it in a life of action. The wholesome, sane,
average, happy men--of whom Duhamel is an excellent example--are mostly
men of action. The very existence of this book is a contradiction of
his happiness of contemplation theory as applied to himself. It may
well be questioned whether Duhamel would have written “Possession du
Monde” if he had not been the kind of man who finds happiness in giving
expression to every emotion. Besides self-study is safe only for strong
natures. Self-analysis was the undoing of the man in one of Duhamel's
best books, “Confession de Minuit.”
Finally, what is “happiness”? Is it merely a feeling? Gladness? If
that were all, and the ultimate end of life, would not the logical
conclusion be that the happiest--and therefore the most successful--man
would be the joyful maniac?
The publication of M. Duhamel which has the greatest popularity is the
one that his admirers would wish he had not written: “Possession du
Monde.” It is a protest against the evaluation of life commercially,
and a plea for a moral or spiritual standard. This is a topic for an
epoch maker, and one who has not a vision or a plan should not essay
it. M. Duhamel may have both, but he does not reveal them. He displays
only the wish that the world should be better. In the jargon of the
Freudian, it is a wish-fulfilment that does not realise. It is neither
well done nor convincing, and it has been well and convincingly done
by many writers, and still we have not profited by it. Amiel did it;
Maeterlinck did it; Karr did it; and “others too numerous to mention.”
They may have had some effect upon individuals, but the history of
the past eight years shows that they had no effect upon the world
at large, its evolution, or devolution. Moreover, there is a note
of unction and self-satisfaction running through the book that is
displeasing, if not offensive. It is quite true, or likely to be true,
that “to think about the soul, to think about it at least once in the
confusion of every crowded day, is indeed the beginning of salvation,”
but there is a book in which this is said in a more convincing way than
M. Duhamel can ever hope to say it.
Viewed from a literary standpoint alone, the book is in keeping with,
if not quite up to, the standard of his other works. His prose is
always musical, and he often creates an atmosphere rather than an
edifice. He is never emphatic, mandatory, severe, superlative. He is
soft, gentle, often ironical, but always human.
Two remarkable pieces of fiction constitute Duhamel's output since the
four war books: “Les Hommes Abandonnés” (Abandoned Men) and “Confession
de Minuit” (Midnight Confession). The first contains eight histories
which try to prove that when men are gathered together in a crowd they
are abandoned by the individual soul. It is an illustration on the
reverse side in favour of individualism.
“Confession de Minuit” is particularly significant as being named
by the author in the interview as his favourite work. “As a human
research I believe that it is the one with the most meaning,” he said
of this novel; and it is, therefore, a matter of self-congratulation
on the part of the writer that he found this book to be the one
which interpreted to him the author's particular genius in the most
convincing and interesting light The story has its bearing upon the
author's theories because it illustrates more clearly than any of his
other works a statement made by him in the interview:
“People often reproach me with being interested only in my
stories with sick people or with children. Healthy men do
not register the motives which govern them. When one studies
a sick person one is able to see the relations between moral
characteristics which in the healthy man exist, but are hidden.”
However, I hold that the average man, healthy, typical, scarcely
exists in literature, and that the most interesting creations
from the human point of view had for their subjects men who were
unbalanced--from Hamlet to Leopold Bloom; from Raskolnikov to
Dorian Gray.
“Confession de Minuit” is the self-revelation of a man who was
decidedly unbalanced. As a bit of art work the book is unique and
remarkable. Almost the unity of a short-story is preserved without
recourse to any of the usual machinery of the ordinary novel, such as
plot, action, or conversation, except a very little of the most casual
nature. To a person who reads fiction for character delineation this
absence of trappings is a distinct gain.
“Confession de Minuit” is the story of a man than whom a more
uninteresting person could hardly be found in life; and yet as told by
the man himself, Duhamel sustains the interest of the reader in the
recital of pitiful weakness from the first page to the last without one
lapse into dryness or loss of sympathy for the character, with whom, in
the flesh, it would have been hard to feel any sentiment besides pity.
It opens with the incident which causes the man to lose his position
as a small clerk in an office through an utterly senseless--although
perfectly harmless--performance: yielding to a sudden impulse to touch
the ear of his employer just to assure himself that the employer
was really made of flesh and blood, as himself. As society, or in
this case the employer, is more afraid of an insane person than of a
criminal, the reader does not share the man's feeling of injustice
because he is first confronted with a revolver and then thrown speedily
and bodily out of the office where he had been a faithful worker for
several years; although he is able to pity the victim. The story,
as told by the man himself, traces his rapid deterioration through
progressive stages of self-pity, self-absorption, and inability to get
hold of himself, to make an effort to re-establish himself, or even
to seek advice or sympathy, until the last night when he pours out
his “confession” to a stranger, with the statement that, on account
of his failure in every relation in life, he is never going home to
his old mother who has supported him with her small income and her
needlework--nor is he ever going anywhere else, so far as the reader
can see. He does not commit suicide. In fact, the story leaves one with
the impression that he is merely “going crazy.” Whether or not he is
insane when the recital begins with the commission of the insane act is
a matter for neither the novelist nor the critic to state.
The great art of the writer lies in his ability to sustain interest at
a high level in a pure character study of what is frequently described
as a “shut-in personality.”
This novel seems to have been written without reference to the author's
happiness or “cult of the soul” theory. It might almost be construed
as a contradiction of it. One might put a fatalistic construction upon
it, if one did not take a material point of view of health and disease.
I do not see how anyone could get away from the conviction that the
man who makes the “Midnight Confession” of his own pitiful failure
in life is a victim of either his own mental limitations, or else of
his particular environment, or of both. The only other way in which
anyone might account for his utter inability to get hold of life or to
stand up against his first discouragement is the refuge of the Radical
Socialist--that society gave him no chance, the concrete illustration
being the cruel way in which constituted authority, or his employer,
treated his first downward step. But if the author had intended to
condemn the employer and to excuse the man he would hardly have
selected for this step an act which would so readily arouse a question
as to the man's sanity, nor would he have followed the incident with
a story in which the only development was rapidly increasing loss of
touch with the outside world. No philosophy, or religion, or cult could
have helped this man, who was handicapped with a nature so weak that it
could not resist an impulse which would have been suppressed instantly
by any well-balanced person; nor could it have given him the strength
to withstand the simple discouragements that are the inevitable lot of
all men. He simply was not able to cope with something--define it as
one may.
One moral the story teaches. And that is the nobility of sympathy with
even the weakest, most despised, and least interesting of human beings.
M. Duhamel consecrates his life to the prevention of war. It is a noble
gesture. He is gifted, sane, articulate, and temperamentally adapted
and adjusted to the task. Were he a platonist and not a neo-platonist,
I am sure greater success would crown his efforts. Twenty-five hundred
years ago a man who penetrated the mysteries of life and death more
deeply than anyone before or since said to his pupils who had gathered
to speed him to the Great Beyond, the ship having returned from Delos
and the Eleven having decided to release Socrates from his fetters:
“The body fills us with passions and desires, and fears, and all
manner of phantoms and much foolishness; and so, as the saying
goes, in very truth we can never think at all for it. It alone
and its desires, cause war and factions and battles for the
origin of all wars is the pursuit of wealth.”
Until that pursuit can be substituted, the labours of M. Duhamel and
his co-founders of “Clarté” are likely to be in vain.