your father, your best friend? Should I not force you to hear the truth
when you are deceiving yourself and lead you back when you go astray?
Come! a truce to vanity between us! I think more of your intelligence
than you do yourself, for I do not propose to allow it to degenerate by
feeding on unhealthy food. Listen to me, Emile! I know very well that it
is the fashion among the young men of to-day to pose as legislators, to
philosophize on every subject, to reform institutions that will last
much longer than they will, and to invent religions and social
systems--a new morality. The imagination delights in these chimeras, and
they are very innocent when they don't last too long. But we must leave
it all on the benches at school, and learn to know and understand
society before destroying it. We soon discover that it is far superior
to us, and that the wisest course is to submit to it, with shrewd
tolerance. You are too big a boy now to waste your desires and
reflections on a subject that has no bottom. I wish you to become
interested in real, positive life; to study the meaning and application
of the laws by which we are governed, instead of exhausting yourself in
criticizing them. On the other hand, if such study tends to create a
spirit of reaction and of disgust with the truth, you must abandon it
and set about finding something useful to do for which you feel that you
are fitted. Come, we are here to have an understanding and arrive at
some conclusion: no vain declamations, no poetic dithyrambs against
heaven and mankind! Poor creatures of a day that we are, we have no time
to waste in trying to ascertain our destiny before and after our brief
appearance on earth. We shall never solve that enigma. It is our bounden
duty to work incessantly here on earth and to go hence without a murmur.
We must account for our labors to the generation that precedes us and
shapes us, and to that which follows us and which we shape. That is why
family bonds are sacred and the rights of inheritance inalienable,
despite your fine communistic theories, which I have never been able to
understand, because they are not ripe and the human race must still wait
for centuries before accepting them. Tell me, what do you propose to
do?"
"I have absolutely no idea," replied Emile, overwhelmed by this
avalanche of narrow-minded, cold commonplaces, uttered with brutal and
arrogant fluency. "You solve with so much assurance questions which it
will probably require my whole life to solve, that I am unable to follow
you in this ardent race toward an unknown goal. I am too weak and my
intelligence is apparently too limited to find in my own energy the
motive or the reward of so many efforts. My tastes in no wise incline me
to make them. I love mental labor, and I should love bodily labor, if it
should become the servant of the other in procuring the gratification of
the heart; but to work in order to hoard, to hoard in order to retain
and increase one's hoard, until death puts an end to this unreasoning
thirst--that has neither sense nor any attraction to me. I possess no
faculty which you can employ for that object; I am not born a gambler
and the enthralling chances of the rise and fall of my fortune will
never cause me the slightest emotion. If my aspirations and my
enthusiasm are chimeras unworthy of a serious mind, if there is no
eternal truth, no divine reason for the existence of things, no ideal
which we can carry in our heart to sustain ourselves and guide our
footsteps through the evils and injustices of the present, then I no
longer exist, I no longer believe in anything; I consent to die for you,
father; but as to living and struggling like you and with you, I have
neither the heart nor the arm nor the head for that sort of work."
Monsieur Cardonnet quivered with rage, but he restrained himself. Not
without design had he thus awkwardly aroused his son's indignation and
spirit of resistance. He had determined to lead him on to speak out his
whole thought, and to test his enthusiasm, so to speak. When he realized
from the young man's bitter tone and desperate expression that it really
was as serious as he had feared, he determined to go around the obstacle
and to manœuvre in such a way as to recover his influence.
XIII
THE STRUGGLE
"Emile," rejoined the manufacturer with well-feigned calmness, "I see
that we have been talking for some moments without understanding each
other, and that if we continue on this tack you will pick a quarrel with
me and treat me as if you were a young saint and I an old heathen. With
whom are you in such a passion? I was quite right, at the outset, to try
to put you on your guard against enthusiasm. All this warmth of brain is
simply youthful effervescence, and when you are as old as I am and have
had a little experience and are accustomed to doing your duty, you won't
think it necessary to flap your wings in order to be honest, or to shout
your convictions so loud. Beware of emphasis, which is nothing more than
the language of self-satisfied vanity. Tell me, boy, do you happen to
believe that honor, morality, good faith in keeping engagements, humane
sentiments, pity for the unfortunate, devotion to country, respect for
the rights of others, domestic virtues and the love of one's neighbor
are very rare and substantially impossible virtues in these days and in
the world we live in?"
"Yes, father, I do firmly believe it."
"Well, I believe nothing of the kind. I am less misanthropic at fifty
than you are at one-and-twenty; I have a better opinion of my
fellow-men, apparently because I don't possess your lights and your
infallible glance!"
"In heaven's name! do not make fun of me, father; you break my heart."
"Very well, let us talk seriously. I will assume with you that those
virtues are the religion and the rule of life of a small number of
people. Will you at least do me the honor to assume that they are not
wholly foreign to your father's character?"
"Most of your acts, father, have convinced me that to do good was your
sole ambition. Why then do your words seem to attempt to show me that
you have a less noble aim?"
"That is precisely what I want to come at. You agree that my conduct is
irreproachable, and yet you are scandalized to hear me appeal to calm
common sense and to the counsel of sound logic! Tell me, what would you
think of your father if, every hour in the day, you should hear him
declaiming against those who do not follow his example? If, setting
himself up as a model, and all puffed out with self-love and
self-admiration, he should weary you at every turn with his own praises
and with anathemas hurled at the rest of mankind? You would hold your
peace and throw a veil over that annoying absurdity; but, do what you
would, the thought would come that your worthy father had one deplorable
weakness and that his vanity detracted from his merit."
"Doubtless, father, I prefer your reserve and your judicious modesty;
but when we are alone together, and on the rare and solemn occasions
when you deign to open your heart to me, should I not be overjoyed to
hear you extol noble ideas and kindle a holy enthusiasm in my heart,
instead of hearing you sneer at my aspirations and trample them
contemptuously in the dirt."
"I do not despise noble ideas, nor do I laugh at your worthy
aspirations. What I do spurn and what I desire to stifle in you are the
declamation and braggadocio of the new humanitarian schools. I cannot
endure their holding up principles as old as the world in the guise of
truths unheard of until this day. I would like you to love duty with
immovable tranquillity, and perform it with the stoical silence of
genuine conviction. Believe me, an acquaintance with good and evil
doesn't date from yesterday, and I did not wait to learn justice until
you had sucked in the celestial manna while smoking your cigar on the
sidewalks of Poitiers."
"All this may be true, generally speaking," said Emile, heated by
Monsieur Cardonnet's persistent irony. "There are old citizens who, like
you, father, practise virtue without ostentation, and there may be
impertinent students who preach it without loving it and, as it were,
without knowing what it is. But your last shaft of satire I can not take
to my own account or that of my young friends. I do not claim to be
anything more than a child and do not pride myself on any experience I
may have had. On the contrary, I come with respect and confidence,
actuated only by good instincts and good intentions, to ask you for the
truth, for advice, example, assistance and instruction. I have on my
side only my youthful ideas, and I lay them at your feet. Disgusted as I
am by the shocking contradictions which the laws of society recognize
and sanction, I implore you to tell me how you have been able to accept
them without protest, and to remain an honest man. I confess that I am
weak and ignorant, for I cannot conceive the possibility of such a
thing. So tell me, I pray you, instead of heaping freezing sarcasm on
me. Am I blameworthy in asking for light? am I insolent and mad because
I desire to know the laws of my conscience and the aim of my life? Yes,
your character is noble and your conduct judicious and wise; your heart
is kind and your hand liberal; you assist the poor man and you pay him
handsomely for his labor. But whither are you going by this straight,
sure road? It seems to me that you sometimes lack indulgence, and your
severity has often frightened me.
"I have always said to myself that your sight was clearer and your mind
more provident than those of tender, timid natures, that the momentary
suffering you inflict was with a view to doing lasting good and to
strengthening the foundations of talent; and so, notwithstanding my
distaste for the studies you imposed upon me, notwithstanding the
sacrifice of my tastes to your hidden purposes, and the constant denial
and stifling of my desires at their birth, I made it the law of my life
to follow you and obey you in everything. But the time has come when you
must open my eyes if you wish me to succeed in this superhuman effort;
for the study of the law doesn't satisfy my conscience; I cannot imagine
myself ever engaging in legal contests, still less compelling myself,
like you, to urge men on to toil for my benefit, unless I see clearly
whither I am going and what sacrifice beneficial to mankind I shall have
consummated at the cost of my happiness."
"Your happiness then would consist in doing nothing and living with your
arms folded, staring at the stars? It seems that work of any sort vexes
and tires you, even the study of the law, which all young men learn in
sport?"
"You are well aware that the contrary is true, father; you saw me become
passionately interested in the most abstract studies, and you stopped me
as if I were rushing to my destruction. You know well, however, what my
wishes were, when you urged me to seek some material application of the
sciences I preferred. You were not willing that I should be an artist or
a poet; perhaps you were right; but I might have been a naturalist, or
at least an agriculturist, and you forbade that. And yet that was a
real, practical application.
"Love of nature impelled me toward life in the country. The infinite
pleasure that I took in investigating nature's laws and mysteries led me
naturally to the discovery of its concealed forces and to the attempt to
guide them and make them more fruitful by intelligent toil. Yes, that
was my vocation, you may be sure. Agriculture is in its infancy; the
peasant wears himself out in monotonous routine tasks; vast tracts of
land are untilled. Science would increase tenfold the richness of the
soil and lighten the labor of man.
"My ideas concerning society were in accord with my dreams of such a
future. I asked you to send me to some model farm to study. I should
have been happy to become a peasant, to work with mind and body, to be
constantly in contact with men and things as nature knows them. I would
have applied myself with zeal, I would have ploughed farther than some
others perhaps in the field of discoveries! And some day I would have
founded, upon some desert, naked tract of land transformed by my labors,
a colony of free men living together like brothers and loving me as a
brother. That was my only ambition, in that direction alone was I
thirsty for fortune and glory. Was it an insane freak? and why did you
require me to go and work like a slave to learn a code of laws that will
never be mine?"
"There you are! there you are!" said Monsieur Cardonnet shrugging his
shoulders; "there we have the Utopia of Brother Emile, Moravian brother,
Quaker, Neo-Christian, Neo-Platonist and God knows what. It is
magnificent, but it is absurd."
"Pray tell me why, father? for again you pronounce sentence without
giving any reasons."
"Because, mingling your socialistic Utopias with your vain speculations
as a scientist, you would have poured treasures upon the barren rock,
you would not have raised wheat from the sterile soil nor would you have
raised men capable of living as brothers from the communistic idea. You
would have spent foolishly with one hand what I had saved with the
other; and, at forty years of age, with your imagination run dry, at the
end of your genius and your confidence, disgusted with the imbecility or
the perversity of your disciples, mad perhaps--for that is what
excitable and romantic minds come to when they seek to put their dreams
in practice, you would have come back to me, crushed by your
helplessness, angry with mankind, and too old to return to the right
road. Whereas, if you listen to me and follow me, we will travel
together over a straight, sure road, and within ten years we shall have
made a fortune of which I don't dare name the amount, for you would not
believe me."
"Let us admit that this is not a dream also, father, for it makes little
difference for my present purpose; what shall we do with this fortune?"
"Whatever you choose, all the good that you may then dream of doing; for
I am not at all disturbed about your common sense and prudence, if you
will wait for experience of life and allow your brain to mature in
peace."
"What do you say? we will do good! you must tell me about that, father,
and I will be all ears! What is the blessing with which we will endow
mankind?"
"You ask the question! In heaven's name, what divine mystery do you
expect to find in human affairs? We shall have bestowed upon a whole
province the benefits of industrial activity! Are we not already on the
way? Is not work the source and sustenance of work? do we not employ
more men here in a day than agriculture and the petty uncivilized trades
that I propose to put down used to employ in a month? Do they not
receive higher wages? Are they not in a fair way to acquire the spirit
of order, prudence, sobriety, all the virtues that they lack? Where are
these virtues, the poor man's only blessing, concealed? In absorbing
work, in salutary fatigue and in proportionate wages. The good mechanic
has the family spirit, respect for property, submission to the laws,
economy, and the habit and the advantages of saving. Idleness, with all
the wretched arguments it engenders, is what ruins him. Keep him busy,
overwhelm him with work; he is strong, and will become stronger; he will
cease to dream of overturning society. He will become orderly in his
conduct, his house will be well kept, he will introduce comfort and
tranquillity there. And if he lives to be old and infirm, however
willing you may be to assist him, it will not be necessary. He will have
thought of the future himself; he will no longer need alms and a
protector like your friend Jappeloup the vagabond; he will be really a
free man. There is no other way to save the people, Emile. I am sorry to
tell you that it will take longer to carry out this plan than to
conceive a fine Utopian scheme; but if it be a long and hard
undertaking, it is worthy of a philosopher like you, and I do not
consider it beyond the strength of a hard worker of my sort."
"What! is that the whole ideal of industry?" said Emile, crushed by this
conclusion. "Have the people no other future than incessant toil, for
the benefit of a class that is never to work at all?"
"That is not my idea," Monsieur Cardonnet replied; "I hate and despise
idlers; that is why I don't like poets and metaphysicians. I think that
everybody should work according to his powers, and my _ideal_, as that
word seems to please you, is not far removed from that of the
Saint-Simonians: 'To every one according to his capacity,' recompense
proportioned to desert. But in these days the manufacturing industry has
not yet become so firmly established that we can think about a moral
system of subdivision. We must look at what is and not speculate as to
what is possible. The whole movement of the age tends toward
manufacturing. Let it reign and triumph then; let all men work, some
with the arm, some with the brain; it is for him who has more brain than
arm to direct the others: it is his right and his duty to make a
fortune. His wealth becomes sacred, since it is destined to increase in
order that there may be more work and higher wages. Society should lend
a hand therefore in every way to establish the power of the sagacious
man; his sagacity is a public blessing; and he himself should struggle
constantly to increase his activity; it is his duty, his religion, his
philosophy. In short he must be rich in order to keep growing richer, as
you said, Emile, not realizing that you were uttering the most valuable
of axioms."
"So, father, you would give to a man only as long as he works? Pray, do
you make no account of the man who cannot work?"
"I find in wealth the means of assisting the infirm and the insane."
"But the sluggard?"
"I try to correct him, and if I fail, I turn him over to the law, since
he is certain before long to become a nuisance and to incur its
penalties."
"In a perfectly constituted society that might be just, because the
sluggard would be a monstrous exception; but in exercising authority
according to such strict rules as yours, when you demand from the
workingman all his strength, all his time, all his thoughts, all his
life, ah! how many would be dismissed as sluggards and abandoned to
their fate!"
"With the advantages accruing from the increase of manufacturing, we
should very soon succeed in increasing the well-being of the poorer
classes to such an extent that we could easily found schools where their
children would be taught the love of work at almost no expense."
"I think that you are mistaken, father; but even if it were true that
the rich would give their attention to the education of the poor, the
love of incessant work, without other compensation than the certainty of
a pittance for one's old age, is so contrary to nature that you can
never kindle it in children. A few exceptional natures, consumed by
energy or ambition, will sacrifice their youth; but whoever is
simple-hearted, loving, inclined to reverie, to innocent and legitimate
pleasures, and under the influence of that craving for affection and
tranquillity which is the lawful privilege of the human race, will fly
from this jail of incessant toil in which you seek to confine him, and
will prefer the chances of poverty to the security of slavery. Ah!
father, your rugged constitution, your untiring energy, your stoical
sobriety and your inveterate habit of working make you an exceptional
man, and you imagine a society formed after your image, you do not see
that there is no suitable place there for any but exceptional men.
Permit me to tell you that that is a Utopian conception far more
appalling than mine."
"Well, Emile, I wish that you believed in it," said Monsieur Cardonnet
warmly; "it is a source of strength, and an invaluable stimulant in this
society of dreamers, idlers and apathetic creatures in which I am
devoured with impatience. Be like me, and if we should find in France,
at this moment, a hundred men like us, I promise you that there would be
no more exceptions a hundred years hence. Activity is contagious,
magnetic, miracle-working! it was through activity that Napoléon held
sway over Europe: he would have owned all Europe if he had been a
manufacturer instead of a fighting man. Oh! since you are an enthusiast,
be enthusiastic for my ideas! shake off your languor and share my fever!
If we do not attract the whole race, we shall make great breaches
through which our descendants will see it moving about in a sacred
frenzy."
"No, father, never!" cried Emile, dismayed by Monsieur Cardonnet's
terrible energy; "for that is not the road for mankind to follow. There
is in it no trace of love or pity or gentleness. Man was not born to
know naught but suffering and to extend his conquests over matter only.
The conquests of the intellect in the domain of ideas, the pleasures and
refinements of the heart, which, according to your plan, should be
carefully regulated accessories in the workingman's life, will always be
the noblest and sweetest aspiration of every normally constituted man.
Do you not see that you cut off one whole side of the benevolent
intentions of God? that you do not give the slave of toil time to
breathe and to know himself? that education directed solely to
moneymaking will make mere brutish machines and not complete men? You
say that you conceive an ideal to be realized in the course of
centuries, that a time may come when every one will be rewarded
according to his capacity. Well, I say that your formula is false
because it is incomplete, and unless we add to it: 'To everyone
according to his needs,' it is unjust, it is simply asserting the right
of him who is strongest in intellect or will, it is aristocracy and
privilege under other forms. O father, instead of fighting with the
strong against the weak, let us fight with the weak against the strong.
Let us try! but in that case let us not think of making our fortunes,
let us renounce the idea of hoarding for our own benefit. Give your
consent, for I, for whom you are working to-day, give my consent. Let us
try to identify our ideals in this way, and let us renounce personal
profit while devoting ourselves to work. Since we cannot by ourselves
alone create a society in which all the members have an equal interest,
let us be the workmen of the future, devoted to the weak and incapable
of the present."
[Illustration: _EMILE IN CONFERENCE WITH HIS
FATHER._
_When he realized from the young man's bitter tone and desperate
expression that it really was as serious as he had feared, he determined
to go around the obstacle and to manœuvre in such a way as to recover
his influence._]
"If Napoléon's genius had been trained to this doctrine, perhaps it
would have converted the world; but let us find a hundred men like us,
let this fever to acquire wealth become a divine zeal, let the longing
to practise charity consume us, let us give all our workmen a share in
all our profits, let our great fortune be not your property and my
heritage, but the property of all those who have assisted us, according
to their abilities and their strength, in amassing it; let the workman
who brings his stone be put in a way to know as much of the material
joys of life as you who bring your genius; let him too be able to live
in a fine house, to breathe pure air, to eat healthy food, to rest after
fatigue, and to educate his children; let us find our reward, not in the
useless luxury with which you and I can surround ourselves, but in the
joy of having made others happy--I can understand that ambition and be
carried away by it. And then, father, dear father, your work will be
blessed.