V.—Let us hope so.
P.—Well, let me see your handsomest almanac.
V.—Here you are, sir. It costs thirty cents.
P.—Here's your money.
V.—Thanks, sir. See you again. Almanacs! New almanacs! New calendars!
There is, perhaps, a slight error in Leopardi's reasoning. It is not because our life has been bad that it would be a burden to begin it all over again. Even a happy life lived twice would scarcely possess any greater pleasures. The element of curiosity must be taken into account. There is no human being, however resigned to the monotony of a becalmed existence, who does not in the bottom of his heart hope for some unforeseen event.
But is it really true that this idea is not contained in Leopardi's dialogue? It is there, although hidden, and doubtless I have taken it from there. Wherever it may come from, it is true, at least if it be applied to life as a whole. For everybody cherishes the remembrance of hours, and sometimes days, which he would gladly live over again. It is often one of the occupations of men to seek to create in their lives circumstances that plunge them for a moment back into the joys of the past, even if they must pay for this momentary resurrection with subsequent pain....
Leopardi, who was a distinguished philologist, an excellent Hellenist, a great poet and an ingenious philosopher, endowed with eloquence, was unable to discover happiness or even peace in the exercise of these multiple gifts. His health was of the most wretched; his heart, left empty, sounded in his bosom at the slightest shock; he was timid and his nerves quivered at every jar, like those harps which were in fashion during his youth. He was born four years before Victor Hugo and died young, without having tasted fame, while Manzoni, who was destined to fill an entire century, had been for a long time known throughout Europe. Is the source of Leopardi's pessimism to be sought among these divers causes? That is hard to believe. The invalid, far from cursing life, is filled with hope; he is an optimist, and wishes to get well; he knows that he will recover. He is not the person with whom to speak of the infinite vanity of all things. It would rouse his fury to listen to the condemnation of those boons that are momentarily out of his reach but which he is preparing to seize and reconquer. Scarron was more sickly and more deformed than Leopardi, yet he was none the less a gay, all too gay, fellow. As for not being understood, or at least, not being received at one's proper value,—there is nothing in that to make a healthy mind pessimistic. The superior man, after all, scorns the opinion of men so long as it remains only an opinion,—that is to say, a matter without practical consequences. And this was Leopardi's situation, for he could have lived in independence upon his scant, but honorable patrimony.
Pessimism is related to character, and character is an expression of physiology. The case with writers, philosophers and poets is exactly the same as with men of other professions. They are gay, sad, witty, morose, avaricious, liberal, ardent, lazy, and their talent assumes the color of their character.
If one were to make a study of literature from this point of view,—a procedure which would not lack interest,—one would very probably discover a great number of pessimists, or, as they were called formerly, sad spirits. There are few men of worth who have not at times found a bitter taste to life, even among those who, like M. Renan, professed eternal joviality. There is no great writer without great sensibility; he is capable of keen joys, and of excessive pain as well. Now pain, which is depressive, leaves deeper traces in life than joy. If intelligence does not rule, if it does not intervene to establish a hierarchy, or an equilibrium of sensations, then the sad ideas triumph because of their superior numbers and power. Renan's serenity is perhaps only the apathy of indifference; Goethe's serenity represents the victory of intellect over sensibility.
Pessimism is neither a religious sentiment nor a modern one, although it has often assumed religious form and although the most celebrated pessimists belong to the nineteenth century. The Greeks, who knew everything, knew the despair of living: the pessimism of Heraclitus had preceded the optimism of Plato. There are few pages more bitter than those in which the naturalist Pliny summarizes the miseries of human life. Nature casts man upon the earth; of all animals he is the only one destined to tears; he cries from the moment of birth and never laughs before his fortieth day. And after having enumerated all the evils and the passions which desolate mankind, Pliny concludes by approving the ancient Greek epigram: "It is best not to be born or to die as soon as possible."
Leopardi has scarcely done more than paraphrase these elementary ideas, but this he has done with abundance and ingeniousness. So funereal is his spirit that he throws a veil of mourning over the most charming things: "Enter a garden of plants, herbs and flowers," he says, "even in the gentlest season of the year. You cannot turn your glance in any direction without discovering traces of misery. All the members of this vegetable family are more or less in a 'state of suffering.' There a rose is wounded by the sun that has given it life; it shrivels, blanches, and withers away. Further on, behold that lily, whose most sensitive, most vital parts are being sucked by a bee.... This tree is infested by a swarm of ants; others, by caterpillars, flies, snails, mosquitoes; one is wounded in its bark, tortured by the sun, which penetrates into the wound; the other is attacked in the trunk or in its roots. You will not find in all this garden a single small plant whose health is perfect.... Every garden is, in a way, nothing but a vast hospital,—a place even more lamentable than a cemetery,—and if such beings are endowed with sensibility, it is certain that non-existence would to them be far preferable to existence." Leopardi here commits the error of him who wishes to prove too much. His pessimism abdicates reason, and the sentence about nothingness being preferable to life, which in Pliny was beautiful and philosophic, acquires in the Italian philosopher a somewhat ridiculous sentimentality.
Jouffroy, perhaps with this page in mind, has put tender souls on guard against any belief in the sensibility of plants: let us leave that to the reveries of Pythagoras,—so noble, from other standpoints,—or to the fairy tales, whither we may go of an evening in spring to pluck the rose that speaks. But if he had possessed a more intimate knowledge of nature, and of the relations between insects and plants, what a picture at once admirable and cruel would not Leopardi have been able to draw! Those mosquitoes, upon whom he looks as allies of the caterpillars in ravaging the leaves of some cherry-tree, are ichneumons, and it is the caterpillars themselves that they have come to attack, piercing them with a long, hollow borer which permits the mosquito to lay in the very flesh of the caterpillar eggs which, when they become larvae, will gnaw the living flesh like terrible little vultures.
If Leopardi had known this and many another thing,—if he had known that every living creature is in turn prey and depredator, in turn eater and eaten, he would have considered with even greater bitterness the arrival of the new year, which hastens from the very first days of its springtime, to impart full strength and full passion to the instincts of life and devastation.
Leopardi despairs: he is, therefore, a weakling. His humble almanac-vendor is made of better clay. He hopes; he wishes to live and live happily; he possesses at least a little of that energy without which other gifts prove only too often to be blemishes and burdens.
It was formerly the custom in such provinces as Normandy, for example, or Britanny, to consecrate children to the color blue. The vow was limited to a certain number of years,—seven, fourteen, or twenty-one,—probably because of the virtues of the number seven, as considerable as they are mysterious. Most often the final figure was decided upon,—the age of reason, says the Church, which considers it never too soon to place its hand upon the conscience and the will. It was charming for the little girls, though somewhat monotonous; on the contrary, it was troublesome to the little boys. But it seems the custom was efficacious in warding off the illnesses of childhood, and that it drew to the "consecrated one" the protection of the gods—I mean, of the Virgin—and of the celestial court. The divine personages, inhabiting the sky, which is blue, were in fact seen in blue by the popular imagination, and to adopt their color and assume their livery was to put oneself in the shelter of their power and win their good grace.
Women, through an analogous, though much more complicated and varied symbolism, often select a color and match all the elements of their toilette to it as far as fashion permits. It is exceedingly difficult to ascertain the reason for their choice. They themselves are at a loss for explanation. Often they believe that they have chosen the color or the shade that best frames their complexion or that harmonizes best with the color of their hair. But often they go astray. Those who are fond of bright blue would look far prettier in very pale green or in deep red, for example. They admit this, but for form's sake only: a secret power holds them to the color that they have desired through instinct,—the color under which they will live, under which they will know love and all the joys and all the tears of life.
Not only women, but men have their color. We seem to do the choosing, but it is nature that imposes it upon us,—it is she that dedicates us to the shade that shall be our favorite atmosphere.
One who will never feel merry amid red hangings will grow cheerful amid green or yellow. Astrologers say that we are dominated by a planet that controls our destiny. This is not very easy to understand. On the contrary, nobody would deny the rôle played in our lives by colors. Would such and such a woman have evoked the passion which is today her happiness if her gown, on that evening, had been rose and not mauve? Who can tell? It requires so little to entrance the eye and so little to provoke it. A false note, and the concert that was thrilling us fills us with laughter. If Cleopatra's nose, said Pascal, had been shorter, the face of the world would have been changed. As for me, I believe that Cleopatra rather resembled Dido, who, according to Scarron's mot, was "somewhat snub-nosed, in the African style." Perhaps it was really the happy shade of her tunic, the harmonious hue of her peplum that vanquished Antony and brought him to the feet of the queen of Egypt. History, which so often gossips beside the point, is mute upon this capital question. Nevertheless, were I to write the life of Cleopatra, I should write it in green,—Nile green, of course,—and nobody, I believe, would have the effrontery to contradict me.
Writing lives or stories in such and such a color is one of the things I have recently tried to do, and the attempt has in some instances proved to be a rather delicate affair to manage. There are blue women; there are rose ones, and mauve and red; that is to say, they may be scarcely represented except in association with one of these colors or shades. Conceiving an old maid who had retained her good looks, who was very pious and yet of very equivocal habits, I could see her only in violet. The story is violet from beginning to end; it was impossible for me to introduce a different hue; I would have felt that I was committing a gross offence against harmony. The lady is vowed to violet: to place upon her head a blue or rose hat would have been a sort of sacrilege which would have terrified even her. Can this be the reason why her narrow life as an old maid found late in life so many happy, if perverse, days? Without a doubt, for violet, which is her color, is also her logic, and it is always well to have respected the logic of one's destiny.
Now, in thus amusing myself, I have not made any pretensions toward reforming esthetics, nor toward revolutionizing the conditions of the art of writing. I have simply been playing with a box of pastels, loving the colors for themselves, one by one, somewhat in the manner of the great and singular artist Odilon Redon, whose flowers are so real that one is moved to smell them.
We have our favorite colors. Tastes and colors.... This aphorism is not at all so frivolous as one might believe. Nietzsche, who was by no means a superficial spirit, cites it willingly. It is an argument that favors individualistic philosophy and freedom of thought. It is an argument, too, and not the least valuable, that supports determinism and the philosophy of necessity. For the colors we love are not dictated by choice but by a secret sympathy which it is impossible for us to reason out. The study of tastes and colors should form part of psychology. Perhaps there might even be discovered here the elements of a new science. Being fond of red or of green is not a matter to be dismissed with indifference.
A preference for red indicates rudeness, and the fondness for green reveals tenderness of character. It is known, moreover, that red is an excitant, while green induces repose, and meditation. The studios of the firm of Lumière, where photographic plates are prepared, were at first provided with red panes of glass; but this led to such effervescence,—the men and women, after several hours of red gazed at one another with such sparkling eyes, that it was necessary to have recourse to panes of a soothing color. Men that come from large cities, overexcited by the disharmony of sounds and colors, can regain a bit of calm only amid the forests and the prairies or at the sea-shore, which is green when it is not blue. Blue is the most soothing of colors, and it is doubtless thanks to its blue sky that the South may endure the brilliancy of its springs, the purple of its autumns.
Color has its importance. Before making friends with anyone, before undertaking the conquest of a woman, observe what their favorite colors are. Think at the same time of your own, and try to make happy combinations. If you are fond of red, take to yourself a dash of blue, thus forming an agreeable lilac; and if it is blue that charms you, do not reject yellow; this combination will give you all the shades of green and will assure you lifelong peace. How many misfortunes have been caused by the maladroit mixing of hostile colors! But above all, beware of violet. There is no more perfidious hue; it is, among the colors of life, the least stable and the most hypocritical.
Mon voyage dépeintVous sera d'un plaisir extrême.Je dirai: J'étais là; telle chose m'advint:Vous y croirez être vous-même.
(The tale of my travels will be extremely pleasant to you, I'll say: "I was there; such and such things happened to me." You'll imagine that you're there yourself.)
(The tale of my travels will be extremely pleasant to you, I'll say: "I was there; such and such things happened to me." You'll imagine that you're there yourself.)
"Alas!" the loving dove would have replied, if he had taken courses under M. Claparède, professor of psychology at the University of Geneva. "Alas! What faith may I have in your testimony? You will tell me what will take place in your head and I'll not have the consolation, as a reward for your absence, of knowing your real adventures!" But this was not what La Fontaine had in mind. In his day they believed in the value of testimony offered in good faith. An eye-witness inspired full confidence. People bowed with mute deference before the honest man who said: "I was there; such and such things happened to me." And the custom continues. Nevertheless, in certain places, they are beginning to show a little less confidence. They have been observing and reflecting and have arrived at the conclusion that the majority of men report far less what they have seen than what they believed they saw. They repeat much less what they heard than what they believed they heard. A dozen persons having witnessed an accident will present a dozen different accounts, or, at least, accounts that do not harmonize exactly. Still better, among the dozen there will be one, perhaps, who will have seen nothing, and another who will have seen the contrary to what his companions saw.
I have made many observations in regard to this subject. One of these observations is that, if by accident I have had direct and exact knowledge of an event reported by a newspaper, the newspaper report will very often be in contradiction to the facts personally known to me. Another observation is, that every time I have read the description of a place that is familiar to me, the description, in almost every case, has seemed to me inexact, incomplete,—in short, false. Huysmans was a meticulous observer; more than any one else he possessed the gift of seeing things well; his sharp eye pierced and bored into men and things. More, he had a passion for exactness, and he would scour all Paris to verify the color of a door or the height of a house. He would have considered it a sort of literary crime to describe anything he had not seen with his own eyes. Well! This man with the miraculous eye said to me one day, speaking of the Bièvre, a little stream which at that time still flowed in the open, between the fortifications and the Botanical Garden: "There is where you may see the last poplars of Paris." This old Parisian, who loved the banks of the Seine, had never beheld its poplars, some of which are truly wonderful, as at the Pont Royal,—the poplars which grow almost along its entire distance. A year ago, a group of us, all serious-minded gentlemen of Paris and of the quartier, were discussing the number of arches that comprise the bridge of Saints-Pères. One may walk every day across a bridge without knowing the number of its arches, but one of us who confessed that he had looked at this bridge from the barge or from the quay perhaps a thousand times in his life, was unable to settle the matter for us. I knew a librarian who was exceedingly fond of the Memoirs of Casanova and who mangled his name, calling him always, and emphatically, Casanova de Seignalt instead of Seingalt, which is the right form. I have been conducting regularly, in the same review, for some twelve years, a chronicle under the titleEpilogues; one of my friends, a fellow staff-member of the same review, has said or written to me at least ten times: "I have read your latestEpisodes...."
This reminds me of the English historian Froude, with whom Dr. Gustave Le Bon recently entertained us, dealing with this very question of testimony. Froude possessed a genius for seeing things exactly opposite to what they really were. A curious example of this is given; it concerns the description he gives of the town of Adelaide, Australia. "I saw at our feet," he said, "in the plain cut by a stream, a city of one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of which not one has ever known or ever will know, the least uncertainty upon the matter of the regular return of his three meals per day." Now, Adelaide is built upon a height, and, at the time Froude visited it, its population, half as numerous as he said it was, was a prey to a terrible famine. And this is the testimony of a grave personage, with a European reputation,—one of the English historians most esteemed by those who have not read him.
"If Froude had lived several centuries earlier," adds M. Le Bon, "all his affirmations would have been held as precious documents, since they came from an eye-witness whose good faith there was no reason for suspecting. How many very serious histories are written with details as little trustworthy as this!"
Jules Simon was astounded "that so many honest persons contradict each other when giving accounts of events that they have witnessed. At every step I encounter this frightful spectacle. Man is least sure of his own spirit. He is not sure of his eyes: the fact is that his eyes and his memory are in strife with his imagination. He believes that he is seeing; he believes that he is remembering, and he is really inventing."
This is what explains those ancient and modern, and even contemporary tales of miracles, apparitions and wonderful happenings that are often attested by a large number of witnesses. The number of witnesses signifies nothing, nor does their honesty or their good faith. On the contrary, good faith, in the matter of testimony, is an element to be on guard against. It is far better to deal with bad faith, which betrays itself always by some blunder. Saint Paul attests that Christ resurrected was beheld by more than five hundred persons; well, it is a matter of doubt now as to whether there ever existed a person named Jesus and surnamed the Christ. Thousands upon thousands of persons in the Middle Ages, and even later, saw the Devil, and, adds M. Le Bon, if unanimous testimony may be considered as proving anything, one might say that the Devil is the personage whose existence has been best demonstrated. Gregory of Tours, an historian of evident good faith, was present during his life at hundreds of miracles, which he describes most complaisantly. He saw them, controlled them: yet the majority of them are pure extravagances, inadmissible in our day even by the most obtuse of pietists. Contemporary history and Judicial reports prove to us constantly the worthlessness of evidence. At the time of theLibancatastrophe, when the vessel went down in broad daylight as the result of a collision, it was impossible to learn from the surviving members of the crew whether the captain was or was not on the bridge at the time of the accident. Some had seen him there, while others swore that he was not on the bridge. In a certain criminal trial it becomes necessary to identify a person who has been but glimpsed; they succeed in identifying him, but only by influencing the witnesses, placing them on the possible track or upon that which justice desires them to follow. According to M. Claparède's experiments, a person of whom only a glimpse has been got, if the witnesses are not influenced, is hardly recognized by one person in four, and at that hesitantly.
Really good observers are very rare. Napoleon pretended to recall every face he had looked upon once. This has become legendary, but it is not quite so. He confused all the names. One day, he sees a certain face in a deputation and thinks that he recognizes it. It was a scholar who was well known in that day, named Ameilhon. The following dialogue takes place: "Aren't you Ancillon?"—"Yes, sire, Ameilhon."—"Librarian of Sainte-Geneviève?"—"Yes, sire, of the Arsenal."—"Continuator of the History of the Ottoman Empire"—"Yes, sire, of the History of the Low Empire." After which Ameilhon, enchanted with the honor, went off, declaring everywhere most emphatically: "The emperor is amazing. He knows everything." And we, in our turn, might say: men are amazing; they imagine that it is enough to have witnessed an event to be sure of that event! The matter is far more complicated. Certainty is difficult to acquire.
Nothing is more difficult than that which is too easy. Nobody would imagine that he could play the violin without having learned how; and if he did, the least attempt would at once extinguish his pretense. But to see? What more simple than that? All one has to do is open one's eyes. "I saw it," is the reply of a witness whose story is contested; "Do you take me for a fellow suffering from hallucination?" Precisely, or else for a purblind person, as the case may be. As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is useless to them, or disagreeable.
The great rule by which almost everything may be explained, is the rule of utility. Certain artisans were visiting the Universal Exposition. They looked about, walked along, and had seen nothing. Farther on they continued to look about, and this time they stopped; they had caught sight of a machine that could be of use to them in their particular work. We do not see that to which we are indifferent. The image glides by, fades and dies out before having had time to become fixed, and we make no effort to retain it.
I knew a colonial functionary who had travelled around the globe, and who spent years in our various colonies in Africa, Asia and America. Once in a while I am tempted to question him. But he is at a loss for reply. Occupied only with his advancement and with his family affairs, he really saw nothing. Of Singapore, the strange city whence a young writer, M. Cassel, has brought us such dazzling, magic impressions, this fine fellow said to me: "Pretty place; a few houses in the European style." I have asked many a question in my life, but never have I received so stupid an answer. But I understand that questions are always indiscreet. To ask anybody what he has seen is to subject him to torture. He sinks a fishing-line into his memory and brings up nothing. Then he tries to invent, and the result is wretched. Hence, for tourists, the great usefulness of the guide-books. Without these books they would have seen nothing, and without them they would recall nothing. "What did I see at Rome?" They open to the marked page. "Rome, Rome?" said a hosier whom his wife had dragged off to Italy. "Ah! I remember! That's the place where I purchased this miserable flannel waistcoat."
In company of those who see nothing or almost nothing are those who see crooked or inversely altogether,—those who allow themselves to be guided far less by their eyes than by their sensibility, who believe that a thing exists because it seems to them that they have received such an impression. Whoever has a department under him, said a telegraph inspector, has been able to prove how inexact the reports he receives often are, and how necessary it is to verify the assertions of agents as to events in which they have been actors or spectators. The account of an event that has just taken place is founded upon the impressions received rather than upon direct observation. At the end of several days the imagination has come into play and it adds the finishing touch to the crystallization of one's conviction. At this moment, if there was an initial error, it has become ineradicable. This explains all those disputes between the public and administrative agents. Each one is actuated by good faith, but each has beheld the event in a different light,—that of his own particular interest,—the one intent upon upholding respect for law or rule, the other eager only to violate it or circumvent it. If the case is taken to court, the judge, whose authoritarian tendency is very marked, almost always finds the agent of the law in the right. It is nevertheless quite certain that the agent is not to be believed more than once out of two times on the average. Even this proportion is perhaps highly exaggerated.
It so happens that according to special plans there is, at the University of Geneva, a large window opening upon an interior corridor, which is to the left as the students enter opposite the janitor's lodge. One day, M. Claparède questioned fifty-four students as to the existence of this window, which they passed by every day. Do you know how many asserted categorically that the window did not exist? Forty-four! Astounded, M. Claparède declares that such a collective testimony is disconcerting and discouraging. And who would not agree with him? Who does not think with horror, after this experiment, of all those criminal trials where a verdict is rendered on the strength of witnesses? testimony? M. Claparède comes to the conclusion that a single witness may be right despite many opposing witnesses whose stories agree. Unanimity itself should be severely controlled, and he adds, quite in accord with my own notions upon the matter: "One is led to ask whether it is not the rule to disregard those objects about us which are without interest to us, and if it is not only by accident, and exceptionally, that such objects leave an imprint upon the sensitive plate of our memory?" Accident, of a surety, or else a particularly sensitive plate. If indeed our eye functions mechanically somewhat in the manner of a photograph lens, we are compelled, in order not to clutter the storehouse of our memory, to make a choice of the images which we classify therein. In this an instinct guides us, though not always infallibly, and calls to our attention those images useful to the conservation or the defense of our life.
Without education, without civilized habits, which constantly increase the number of our requirements of every kind, we should, like animals, have need to retain but a small number of images.
The life of animals moves in a rather restricted circle, and there is not one of their acts that is not dictated by utility. Men, too, obey the rule of utility, but their imagination magnifies this field of the useful in a singular manner, and they find themselves obliged, for the purpose of mere existence, to open their memory to a considerable number of images to which animals are absolutely indifferent. We behold on a table, in a single glance, the plates, the food, the flowers, the glasses and all the rest; the dog sees only the food; the flowers that give us pleasure, the general arrangement that charms us, leave him utterly insensible to their attraction. There are also things to the sight of which we are ourselves insensible: those which are neither beautiful nor ugly, nor useful, nor harmful, neither good nor bad,— everything that is not worth the trouble of being qualified, everything that is neutral to our senses as to our imagination. If, then, we are asked to give testimony regarding the existence of these objects, regarding the reality of those things that cause us neither pain nor pleasure, and which, therefore, we have neglected to retain in our memory, we should be greatly embarrassed.
In general, when we are questioned we have a tendency to affirm that which we believe probable and to deny the case that seems to us improbable. Thus, in the case of the window, this window, opening upon an interior corridor, seemed to the students who were questioned quite improbable, since the thing was useless, even absurd.
In the second place, and this is very important, we hold in our minds a series of types of fact to which invariably we relate the new events that we happen to witness. If, for example, we are in principle assured that every automobile accident is due to the drivers of these vehicles, it is with difficulty that we admit, even if we have seen it with our own eyes, that the accident was the fault of the victim. The case will be just the contrary with the chauffeur: to him, the victim is always in the wrong. But if, for us, the chauffeur is always wrong, our attitude is equally unreasonable. In either case, the images will be distorted and if we are questioned, we will reply with lies uttered in all good faith: "This is so because it ought to be so." M. Claparède even goes so far as to admit that the evidence of various individuals may be erroneous, even if they all agree. I am of his opinion, because it is quite normal that the same interest or the same absence of interest unconsciously guides witnesses of diverse origin and condition. All the ancient explorers of the Kerguelen Isles saw there only sterile and uninhabitable lands. Yet in recent days a colony composed of men from Havre and Norwegians has established itself there and finds the country rough, but healthful and well suited not only to fishing but also to pasturage.
It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance.
A river is a beautiful thing. It runs along, its sings, it laughs, it glints in the sunlight and becomes darker beneath the trees. Sometimes one may see the bottom, where there are stones and grasses, while at times it is a sombre abyss that fills one with shudders. The river comes from afar and goes no one knows whither. True, people say that it has a beginning and that its source lies yonder, in the mountains, but that is not at all so certain. What is a source? When you see a river, it is already a river and it never occurs to you that it may ever have been only a tiny ribbon of water trickling down from a rock. In olden days, when the world was happy, things were far different. Rivers flowed from a marble pitcher which was held in the hands of an eternally youthful, drooping maiden. But the wicked god of the Christians, who is not fond of maidens? beauty, broke those marble pitchers; the mothers of rivers died of grief and now the rivers are born by accident, as best they may be. If we are not so well informed about their birth, we know their life and their death. Their life is to bound along or to flow nonchalantly on, to prattle over the pebbles and dream amid the rushes. Often, when traversing the blooming meadows they love to spread across the grass. If dikes or tree-trunks bar the way they are provoked and even wax furious. But if it is a mill that rises before them, they turn its wheels with docile promptness, and continue on their way unperturbed. The river is the mother of men and trees, of beasts and plants. Without the river there are no fish; there are no birds. There are no crops, no flowers, no wine, no cattle, and man flees, parched by the sun. After having given life, the river has two ways of dying; either it expands into the bosom of a larger river or flows directly to mingle with the sea; the sea is the vast cemetery of all the rivers,—of the smallest as well as the greatest. But the river that dies is nevertheless just as eternal as the ocean that receives it into its depths. The clouds are born of the sea, and the wind wafts them toward the forests, where they make rain and swell the streams. There is in the world a circulation of water as in our bodies there is a circulation of blood. All this is well regulated. The sea loves the river. It comes to meet the stream and sends it as greeting the salt tang of its waves. The river fears this infinitude. For a long time it resists. At last, the sweet waters yield and melt under the powerful kisses of the brine: the swell of the waves lulls the wedded waters to rest.
The river is a person. It has a name. This name is very ancient, because the river, although perpetually young, is very old. It existed before men and before birds. Ever since men were born they loved the rivers, and as soon as they learned how to speak they gave them names. Even when we no longer understand them, the names of the rivers are the most beautiful in the world. There is the Gironde and the Adour; the Loire and the Vienne, the Rhône and the Ariège. But perhaps it is possible to understand these names. Let us try, by having recourse to the studies of a geographical scholar, M. Raoul de Félice. Our rivers have received their names from the various races that anciently occupied Gaul: The Iberians, an unknown people, the Ligurians, the Celts. At the moment of the Roman conquest, almost all the streams of France possess a name. So that modern names are very rare. The Iberians were probably Basques, if not in race at least in language. Even if this is contested, that would not prevent us from tracing the word Adour back to the Basque worditurria, which means spring, source. It is to the Iberians that we likewise owe names such as the Aude, the Orbieu, the Urugne. Here probably came a people yet unknown, but of Indo-European language, which was perhaps the godfather to many of our rivers. To this people it may be we owe the names Somme, Sèvre, Herault,—names that are derived from various roots signifying water, liquid, source. According to the same theory, Durance, Drône, Drot, Drac might be translated by "the running water," and the same idea would be found in the name Rhône, while the Loire would be "the stream that waters;" the Meurthe, "she who moistens." As to the Garonne, that would be, "the rapid one"; but the matter is still under discussion: the Garonne has not given up its secret, any more than the Gironde. We may note, in passing, that there are in France three other Garonnes, without taking into account a Garon, a Garonnette, and a Garonnelle; there are seven or eight Girondes, of which two are in the environs of Paris, tributaries of the Orge and the Marne. The Oise and the Isdre stand for the same thing, namely, "the rapid one," which seems rather hazardous to me in the case of the Oise. Certain rivers flow in a deep-cut bed; thus they have received a name which would signify something like case, vase or sheath: these are the Couse, the Cousin, the Cusom, the Cousanne, the Couzeau, and the names Couzon.
We now come to the part played by the Ligurians. In their language they called the alder-tree that grows along the banks of so many rivers,alisos, alsiaoralison. They gave this name to a number of streams; Alzon, Alzou, Alzau, Auzon, Auzonne, Auzonnet, Arzon, Auze, Auzenne, Auzelle, Auzotte, Auzette, Auzigue, Auzolle, Auzone,—all of which would signify the rivers of the alder-trees. There would also be left to be explained the origin of names ending inenque, such as Allarenque, Laurenque, Durenque, Virenque, but it is not known what they mean. Finally, one could not deny to the Ligurians the name Ligoure, which seems to be the name of the people itself. The Aude and the Orb probably owe their designation to the Phoenician settlers; the second of these is perhaps Greek. With the Celtic period the etymologies become a trifle less uncertain. The Celtic word for water,dour, is clearly found in the Dourbie, the Dourdene and the Dourdèze, the Dourdon, the Dore and the Doire. Another Celtic name for water,escais seen in the Ouche, the Essonne. They called a riveravar; hence, the Abron, the Jabron, the Aveyron, the Arveiron, the Auron; hence probably also the Eure, the Auterne, the Authre, the Automne, the Autruche.Avenmeans river in the present Breton dialect; now, we find rivers called: Avène, Avon, Avègne, Avignon. Fromglanos, meaning brilliant, gleaming, are perhaps derived the Gland, the Glane; fromvernos, alder-tree, they have like the Ligurians christened many rivers: the Vern, the Vernaison, the Vernazon; fromder, oak, came theDère. It should be added that all these words came down to us through the Latin form before acquiring their French form. ThusBièvreand its derivatives Beuvron, Brevenne, Brevonne, derive from the Latinbibrum, itself borrowed from a Celtic word meaning beaver. Is it to the Gauls or the Romans that we owe the names Dive, Divette, Divonne? Does this mean here the fairy, or the divine one? It is difficult to ascertain. There were great resemblances between the tongues.
French and its dialects have naturally named a large number of rivers, either by rechristening them or modifying the old names to give them a French meaning. In this class we have the names suggested by the appearance or the qualities of the river:[1]the Blanche, the Claire, the Brune, the Noire, the Brillant, the Hideuse, the Vilaine, the Furieuse, the Rongeant, the Sonnant, the Creuse, the Sensée. At other times the names come from plants,[2]such as Fusain, Orge, Viorne, Liane, Gland, Orne, Oignon, Trèfle, Rouvre, Lys, Aunes, Bruyère, Troëne; names of animals:[3]Oie, Loir, Louvette, Chèvre, Heron, Ourse, Lionne, Autruche; names of every kind:[4]Mère, Cousin, Sueur, Coquille, Oeil, Oeuf, Rognon, Brêche, Vie, Automne, Blaise, Armance, Abîme. Some proudly bear absolute names: le Fleuve (the Stream), la Rivière (the River); it so happens that they are only rivulets, the one in la Manche, the other in the Alps. And finally, a little river that is probably very wise is called la Même (the Same). The majority of these later names I have taken directly from the map, but a good part of my learning I have borrowed from M. de Félice, who has given us a great deal, free from all pedantry, in his book uponles Noms de nos Rivières(The Names of our Rivers.) Is it not pleasant to know that the Seine means "the gushing one?" Those who wish to learn more may consult the source I have indicated. It is with pain that I wrest myself away from the charms of the rivers of France, for
La rivière est la mère de toute la nature.
The river is the mother of all nature.
[1]These signify, in the order of occurrence: white, dear, dark, black, gleaming, hideous, ugly, furious, gnawing, tinkling, hollow, sensible.
[1]These signify, in the order of occurrence: white, dear, dark, black, gleaming, hideous, ugly, furious, gnawing, tinkling, hollow, sensible.
[2]Prickwood, barley, liburnum, liana, acorn, flowering-ash, onion, clover, common oak, lily, alder-trees, heather, privet.
[2]Prickwood, barley, liburnum, liana, acorn, flowering-ash, onion, clover, common oak, lily, alder-trees, heather, privet.
[3]Goose, dormouse, she-wolf, goat, heron, bear, lioness, ostrich.
[3]Goose, dormouse, she-wolf, goat, heron, bear, lioness, ostrich.
[4]Mother, cousin, sweat, shell, eye, egg, kidney, breach, life, autumn, Blase, Armance, abyss.
[4]Mother, cousin, sweat, shell, eye, egg, kidney, breach, life, autumn, Blase, Armance, abyss.
There is a fall of days as there is a I fall of leaves. I do not know what wind, blowing from the infinite, shakes the years, and sends falling from them one by one the sere and yellow days. Whither do they go? Whither go the sere and yellow leaves? To the great laboratory, no doubt, where Nature fashions her annual resurrections. They will return to us from this laboratory as green as ever, and everlastingly the same in their unchangeable designs, those of the poplar, which are hearts, the chestnut, which are hands, the aspen, which are tridents, and the willow leaves, which are lances. But what becomes of days when they have fallen, sere and yellow? To what remote, unknown, chimerical worlds are they carried off forever? For they are never seen again. New days come,—the foliage of the years,—unheralded days, unexpected days, surprising days, days that one loves and days that one fears; but the olden days, those which were familiar to us, those that we desire, that we wait for, will never return. The foliage of the year will be so well renovated that we shall no longer be able to recognize it at all.
Yes, they are days. They have a beginning and an end, they have light and shadow, they are born of night and into night withdraw to die. They are days, without a doubt, but not the same. Their smiles are different, and also their frowns. The joys they bring us are not distributed with less niggardliness, but they have neither the same perfume nor the same color. Hope not to find again the smile that enchanted you. It is dead. It will not return to the face you love any more than the day of your birth will return. But may you at least hope to see once more the face you love, as it was. Alas! You will perhaps have the illusion of seeing it thus, but it will not be reality, for the days, as they vanish into the night, carry off with them somewhat of the countenances of men as a remembrance. It may well be that with these tiny bits they fashion brand new faces, yonder in the chimerical world, but that is not at all sure.
No, never the same, never. Slowly or rapidly, an indefatigable motion whirls everything about in a farandola whose ends never can meet. The year passes by: one day more! The day passes by: an hour longer! The hour passes by: only another minute! In vain. But all this will at least come back? I have already told you, No. Why insist? Bow to fate.
One never crosses the same river twice, said the Greek philosopher, and if this be to some a source of bitterness, others will find in it good reason to take heart. The latter are those whose memories are filled chiefly with evil days. Let them, then, be content. Neither will they ever behold the same days. Tears flow and smiles fade to the same rhythm of life, to disappear together in the bottomless abyss.
Nothing returns, nothing begins anew; it is never the same thing, and yet it seems always the same. For, if the days never return, every moment brings forth new beings whose destiny it will be to create for themselves, in the course of their lives, the same illusions that have companioned and at times illuminated ours. The fabric is eternal; eternal, the embroidery. A universe dies when we die; another is born when a new creature comes to earth with a new sensibility. If, then, it is very true that nothing begins all over again, it is very just to say, too, that everything continues. One may fearlessly advance the latter statement or the former, according to whether one considers the individual or the blending of generations. From this second point of view, everything is coexistent; the same cause produces contradictory, yet logical effects. All the colors and their shades are printed at a single impression, to form the wonderful image we call life.
And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute.
It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires. Then what matters that which we call the fall of the days or the fall of the leaves?
Neither the leaves nor the days fall at the same time for all men, and the hour that marks the end of a year is likewise that which marks the birth of another.
It is thus I dream, during these closing days of December, of life which is nothing, since it dies incessantly, and which is all, since it is ceaselessly reborn. It is the drop of water that flows off as soon as it falls, but which is followed by another drop that presses upon it in its course. We are that, nothing but that,—drops of water that are formed, fall, and flow away; and during such brief moments we nevertheless have the time to create a world and live in it. It is the nobility and the mystery of life that it should be of such little account and yet be capable of such great things, for the most humble creature is still very important,—one of the atoms without which the mass would possess neither its proper weight nor form. It has its part in the universal movement; it is one of the elements of the movement's equilibrium and its periodicity.
Each one, then, should love his life, even though it be not Very attractive, for it is the only life. It is a boon that will never return and that each person should tend and enjoy with care; it is one's capital, large or small, and can not be treated as an investment like those whose dividends are payable through eternity. Life is an annuity; nothing is more certain than that. So that all efforts are to be respected that tend to ameliorate the tenure of this perishable possession which, at the end of every day, has already lost a little of its value. Eternity, the bait by which simple folk are still lured, is not situated beyond life, but in life itself, and is divided among all men, all creatures. Each of us holds but a small portion of it, but that share is so precious that it suffices to enrich the poorest. Let us then take the bitter and the sweet in confidence, and when the fall of the days seems to whirl about us, let us remember that dusk is also dawn.
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 thenihil 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.
Posterity is a schoolboy who is condemned to learn a hundred verses by heart. He learns ten of them and mumbles a few syllables of the rest. The ten are glory; the rest is literary history.
Traditions? Of course, tradition. But do you not believe that there is a beginning to everything, even to tradition?
Anti-clericalism works for the benefit of the dissident sect. In England, religious radicalism recruits Catholics; in France it recruits Protestants.
Man can no more see the world than a fish can see the river bank.
Many a time have I written the word "beauty," but almost never without being conscious of writing down an absurdity. There are beautiful things, but there is no such thing as Beauty: that is an abridged expression. It cannot be taken in an absolute sense; there is no Absolute.
Civilization is the cultivation of everything that Christianity calls vice....
For two thousand years Christianity, impudently playing with the meaning of words, has been telling us: Life is death, death is life. It is time to consult the dictionary.
Politics depends upon statesmen in about the same measure that the weather depends upon astronomers.
There are two courses open to the prophet: either to announce a future in conformity with the past,—or to be mistaken.
An imbecile is never bored: he contemplates himself.
Nothing is better for "spiritual advancement" and the detachment of the flesh than a close reading of the "Erotic Dictionary."
The greater part of men who speak ill of women are speaking ill of a certain woman.
The man of genius may dwell unknown, but one always may recognize the path he has followed into the forest. It was a giant who passed that way. The branches are broken at a height that other men cannot reach.
Wertherpossesses great interest because Goethe afterward wroteFaust, Wilhelm Meister, and so many other works, all different. TheWertherof those who revamp their first book fifteen or thirty times loses with each new work a little of its initial worth; after the third book it is worth almost nothing. At first, however, one cannot tell whether thatWertheris the product of a brain or of a mould; that is why the first book is sacred.
An unnamable critic notes some of the flaming errors of Verhaeren,—a few "among a hundred others." It is thither, toward the error, toward the stain, toward the wound, that the mediocre spirit, like the fly, wings its way unerringly. He looks at neither the eyes, the hair, the hands, the throat, nor all the grace of the woman passing by; he sees only, the mud with which some churl has bespattered her gown; he rejoices at the sight; he would like to see the spot grow and devour both the gown and the flesh of its wearer; he would have everything as ugly, as dirty and despicable as himself.
Dialogue.—GOD: Who has made you man? MAN: Who has made you God?
Religions turn madly about sexual questions.
The world will never forgive the Jews for having disdained the religion which they gave to the world. There is in this a sort of intellectual treason which reminds one of those merchants who do not wear, or eat, or drink their own merchandise.
When one comes to define the philosophy of the nineteenth century, one will discover that it was only theology.
An opinion is shocking only when it is a conviction.
Nothing so imparts the satisfaction of having accomplished one's duty as a good night's sleep, an excellent meal, a beautiful moment of love.
What is life? A series of sensations. What is a sensation? A remembrance.
One does n't live. One has lived. Life, said an old man, is a regret.
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
There are things which one must have the courage not to write.
As to possessing the truth: I think of those explorers who have with them a tame lion, and who sleep with one eye open.
Those men who live with the greatest intensity are often the ones who seem to take least interest in life.
To have a solid foundation of skepticism,—that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life.
Learning for learning's sake is perhaps as coarse as eating for eating's sake.
It is a singular thing: in literature, when the form is not new, neither is the content.
Man is an animal that "arrived"; that is all.
It was an accident that endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.
Sexual modesty is an advance over the exhibitionism of monkeys.
Modesty is the delicate form of hypocrisy.
Nothing so softens the obduracy of chaste hearts as the certainty of secrecy.
The notion that the dead are not dead assumes, in the crowd, comical forms. I read in a novel (1901): "Madeleine read the letter over again. M. Piot was dead, the poor man! How cold he must be in that north wind!" Men are stupid.
You have doubts? About what? About whom? About God? Why, that's a very simple matter: write to him.—I haven't his address.—Such, in fact, is the state of the question.
Revolutionary socialists make me think of the fellow who, having a piano that was out of tune, would say: "Let's smash this piano and throw the pieces into the fire; in its place we'll install an Aeolian harp."
Christianity has already won three great victories: Constantine, the Reform, the Revolution. A fourth is being awaited, Collectivism, after which it is probable that the Strong, wearied at last of being bullied, will revolt against the Weak and reduce them to slavery—once again.
Property is necessary; but it is not necessary that it should forever remain in the same hands.
To ameliorate and raise the standard of the workingmen to the bourgeois level, is perhaps to create a race of slaves content with their lot,—a cast of comfortable Pariahs.
Thought harms the loins. One cannot at the same time carry burdens and ideas.
Said Sixtus: "Believe in nothing, not even the trade you follow, not even the hand you caress, the eyes in which you are mirrored, not even yourself,—above all, not in yourself."
The true philosopher does not desire to see his ideas applied. He knows that they would be ill carried out, deformed, vulgarized. If need be, he would actually oppose such a course: this has happened.
Modesty is a timid confession of pride.
The ill are always optimistic. Perhaps optimism itself is an illness.
There is a simulation of intelligence, just as there is a simulation of virtue.
Mr. X used to say: "Some people need a great deal in order to retain a little; as for me, I need a little to retain a great deal."
Science is worth what the scientist is worth.
Scholars spread the rumor that science is impersonal. Scholars? They are scholars as much as the masons are architects.
The people may make uprisings; but revolutions, never. Revolutions always come from above.
Descartes wrote to Balzac: "Every day I walk amidst an immense people, almost as tranquilly as you may walk in your lanes. The men I meet produce upon me the same impression as if I were gazing upon the trees of your forests or the flocks of your country-side." All the weakness of the metaphysicians is explained by these two scornful sentences. In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.
The superstition which, among the ancients, caused them to look upon new-born weaklings, lame, blind and hunchbacked infants, as tokens of divine anger, and to sacrifice them, was happier than the religious or scientific sentimentality that tolerates them, brings them up, making of them half-men and introducing eternal germs of decrepitude among the race.
Pity is perhaps at bottom only cowardice. We pity only ourselves or those whom we fear.
Nietzsche stupefies. Why? Calm reflection will show that he almost always expresses common-sense truths.
Nietzsche was a revealer, in the new photographic sense. Contact with his work has brought to light truths that were slumbering in men's minds.
Happiness, like wealth, has its parasites.
One does not dwell in a house; one dwells in himself.
Put a pig in a palace and he'll make a pen of it.
Paul Bourget still believes in duchesses. What is there astonishing about that? There are many people who believe in ghosts.
The crowd has no idea of how much sensibility, and intelligence it requires to enjoy the perfume of a rose or the smile of a woman.
Sainte-Beuve is too scholarly. He cannot stand nude before a nude statue; he has to have pockets from which to take out note-books and papers.
A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes remorselessly.
The little girl expects no declaration of tenderness from her doll. She loves it, and that's all. It is thus that we should love.
The craze for decorations has reached such a height that actors, they say, are proud to play the rôle of an Officer of the Legion of Honor.
I'm very fond of going to the butcher shop and looking at a sheep's brains. We have in our heads a reddish sponge of the same kind, which thinks.
Love disposes one to religiosity. I knew an atheist who wished to go to church one evening to exchange vows with his mistress; through scruples, she refused.
Intelligence is perhaps but a malady,—a beautiful malady; the oyster's pearl.
There are anti-clericals who are in reality somewhat excessive Christians.
Is not the poet who recites his verses before an audience really the nightingale singing his song? Not quite. The instinct has gone astray: sexual mimicry, without actual application. The useful has become a game: and this is the whole history of civilization.
"How many contradictions!""Eh! If I loaded my wagon all on the same side, I'd tumble it over."
Persons full of morality preach. Everything that they judge criminal I either practise or think. And nevertheless....
Love ye one another. How do that, without knowing one another? No, no; a little modesty, a little dignity.
It is shameful to be ashamed of one's pleasures.
To be above everything. To scorn everything and love everything. To know that there is nothing, and that this nothing, none the less, contains everything.
In order to be true, a novel must be false.
To be impersonal is to be personal in a particular manner: for instance, Flaubert. In the literary jargon one would say: the objective is one of the forms of the subjective.
Proudhon said: "After the persecutors, I know nothing more hateful than the martyrs." Not having thought of this myself, I feel pleasure in copying it.
To be seen. The man of letters loves not only to be read but to be seen. Happy to be by himself, he would be happier still if people knew that he was happy to be by himself, working in solitude at night under his lamp; and he would be indeed happiest of all if, after he has closed his door, his servant should open it for a visitor and show to the importunate fellow, through the chink, the man of letters happy to be by himself.
Man begins by loving love and ends by loving a woman.
Woman begins by loving a man and ends by loving love.Said a country vicar to a fanatically scrupulous devotee: "God is not so silly as that."
He has known Claude Bernard, Flaubert, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Goncourt, Manet, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Renan, Taine, Pasteur, Verlaine, Tarde, Mallarmé, Puvis de Chavannes, Marey, Gauguin, Curie, Berthelot; he knows Rodin, Ribot, Renoir, France, Quinton, Monet, Poincaré,—and he complains! He bewails his country's decadence: The ingrate!
Nietzsche opened the gate. Now one may walk straight into the orchard of which, before him, it was necessary to scale the walls.
I am vexed that people should have thought so many things before me. I seem like a reflection. But perhaps some day I'll cause another man to repeat the same thing.
I do not vouch for the fact that none of these observations may be found in my previous writings, or that none will figure in any future work. They may even be found in writings that are not mine.