Chapter I: As for me, I hear and I believe

HE

An understanding auditor is half of the discourse. The solitary sinks and loses himself in the whirlwind of his reasonings. A word, even a look, is enough to give him back his equilibrium.

I was saying, then, that we have done like the philosophers. We have solved the great questions of metaphysic, by attacking them at the head, that is to say at the part that is unattackable. To their affirmation of an absolute and at the same time conscious god, we have opposed, as we have a right to do, a simple and categorical denial. We could take up the attack at the other end, begin from ourselves, seek our cause, find God, seek the cause of God, and so on to infinity. However large a number one conceives, a larger is always possible. And so this terrible God recoils as one draws near him into the depths of the abysses, and the tired intelligence, like a huntsman who yields to the ruses of his quarry, turns round, goes home and thinks of supper, that is to say of practical life.

These subtle games give the mind a juggler's skill. They are neither without attraction nor without utility, but they are games. Drunkenness is to be found in them, but not happiness. Now, happiness is the important matter. One must be happy. Let us, then, limit ourselves to the affirmation that the world is not governed by an intelligence at once infinite and conscious. For lack of another word, let us stop at the idea of chance, as in the time of my dear Epicurus. Nothing has been found more beautiful, more clear, nothing that better satisfies the mind of a man or the mind of a god. It comes to the same thing as saying: that which is, is. This simple proposition admits of no objection; it defies every sophism and every artifice.

The idea of God is only the shadow of man projected in the infinite. Make use of this sentence as supreme refutation and you will find few minds capable of disentangling its meaning or even of relishing its irony.

I do not speak to you of the gods of the nurses, of the little naughty children, and of the good labourers. People sometimes amuse themselves in narrating my appearance on earth, and I am to be seen, in these poor tales, drinking thin wine, gossiping with housekeepers, encouraging strikes, singing the _internationale_, denouncing silk dresses, furs, and white gloves. I appear to the astonished populace as a half-tipsy dolt and a good fellow, and yet at sight of me civilised men fly for their lives and give place to the mob. The divine ideal of the priests does not much differ from this, and, after all, if I had to choose, I should perhaps prefer the company of labourers to that of seminarists. But I have never been accessible to such humble desires, and, moreover, I am not God, I am only a god. That is why I laugh at the confusion of the catechisms, of the pious dreams and of the revolutionary dreams alike. I have no power, but I have never desired either the reign of equality or that of sanctity. I would rather breathe your flowers than your souls, your women than your intellects. Your flowers! Shall I tell you? We have no flowers; we have only those that grow wild in our uncultivated fields, our pathless forests! The gods do not work....

My master plucked a magnificent pearly rose, a rose as lovely as a woman's face, and remained for a long time silent. I understood that he was meditating. He murmured--

"Work: this rose is a work...."

He compared it in his mind to the frail graces of the eglantine.

HE

All is contradiction. I would say no more. Those who created this rose are not those who enjoy it. No payment is the equivalent of the pleasure I feel in breathing its scent; and I, I have done nothing but pass by, and pluck it. Men rebel. How will you prevent them from rebellion? They are right....

He stopped, observing, but without seeing it, the delicious landscape that surrounded us. The emotional silence was only disturbed by the murmur of the bees, the shrill cries of the little birds, or the light falling of the doves who dropped from the trees with a noise of silk dresses.

I was chewing bits of grass, with an air, like his, of preoccupation, but I was thinking of next to nothing.

HE

They are right. And yet rebellion is useless. It is ugly. Happiness is not in revolt. You should find a balance. You do not know how to rest. I did not scorn work just now, but praised idleness. Take these two ideas and plait them harmoniously together. Your life, short as it is, would be as good as ours, if you were to succeed in uniting these two alternatives. The same people should turn by turn rest and work. But, to make oneself worthy of leisure! Perhaps more intelligence is needed to know how to do nothing than to know how to work.

The present state of things cannot last. But can one ever tell? And if, by chance, it should last? Then, there would be formed two castes among men. They exist already in sketch, they would come to exist in precise drawings with violent contours. It would be almost impossible for a slave to become a master. But a master would always be able to become a slave. Your masters of the day are only slaves who, freed for a moment, will necessarily fall back into the servitude that is their destiny.

You see, I am amusing myself with prophecy. None the less, what I know of the order of things is what is apparent to the eyes of all. Do not take my words too seriously. On the whole, since men have had laws, these laws have not varied. No doubt, from that moment, your evolution was complete. Perhaps you will never be able further to modify yourselves, if not by external means. Hence the need of material progress, which is only grandiose vanity. At the end of the swiftest journeys, the man and the woman meet face to face, seeking in each other's eyes the motive of living, that is to say happiness.

Earth has become a narrow cage for you. However, birds that you are, it is your cage, and you are forbidden to leave it. You can paint it in the tenderest colours; it is a cage, and it is your cage. You will no longer go to heaven, the stars have fallen. If this heaven of which the childhood of humanity dreamed is a paradise, all the seats in it are taken. We have no need of you, and are happy where we are; we shall never give place to you. Besides, at what moment would you undertake the journey? At your death? When one is dead, it is a little late for travelling. The immortality of the soul was without doubt the masterpiece of the ecclesiastical imagination. With this truth in his pocket, a man may wander through all countries, and always find servants. The woman who has lost her lover kisses the feet of the impostor who promises her the renewal in the beyond of her temporal felicities. The priest offers his slipper with indifference. They are the happiest of men, for they have ended by believing in a fable so productive. How should they deny the truth and beauty of this marvellous tree whose fruits are gold and love together?

Those who promise a terrestrial paradise are no less baleful to human energy. They too teach sacrifice, the scorn of the present hour, and walking and working with eyes fixed on the future. Priests of religion, priests of politics, all sell very dearly the tickets of a lottery that will never be drawn. Do they know it? Tile merchants of perhaps are not necessarily merchants of lies. Some of them are the first to be duped by the secrets they have inherited, and they make victims of themselves for the vanity of leading a more numerous troop of victims to the sacrifice.

A tradition encourages you to honour the martyr for his faith. The martyr is only an obstinate man. He is in the wrong, since he is conquered. The death that menaces him should have enlightened his understanding.

The wise man has but one belief: himself; the wise man has but one fatherland: life.

Do not imagine that I am teaching you the vulgar selfishness of the comedies and the drinking songs. Oneself may cover a world. The brutes are the only solitaries. A man's sensibility is a surface whose extent he alone is capable of measuring. One being often includes many beings. If it does not include at least two, it is not human, perhaps not animal; it is one of the stones in the road under the feet of other men. True selfishness is a harmony.

But this harmony must be composed by oneself, and woven with one's own hands. To receive happiness ready-made would be offering one's neck to the rope. Christianity found a very beautiful formula:--to work out one's salvation. Now that is a personal work. If some one should propose a method to you, examine it. If you are being offered salvation already prepared, turn away your head: the food is poisoned.

Also, I bring you no commandment. I submit a system to you: the living of one's life. What do those movements of the world matter to you that do not touch your sensibility? Keep your tears for your own pains, and for those that scratch you like brambles as you pass. There is no other ethic than this: the conquest of pain. If it wounds you, be silent, and think of your revenge. Words are snares. Joint responsibility? Have you felt the prick? No? Then you have no share in the responsibility. Do not judge by the intellect the affairs of sensibility, and, when your business is to understand, be insensible to all that is not reason.