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.

INSINUATIONS

Esthetic Morality.

Perhaps we ought to renounce such distinctions as beautiful and ugly, good and bad, good and evil, and so on, and consider in life's acts only the curve of movements. Thus morality and esthetics would blend. Already men of more than average culture consider the subject of a painting only to judge whether the painter has submitted to the same logic the subject of the picture itself, the composition that compasses it, the color that unites it to the vital milieu. A subject, in art, may be criticized only in relation to the purpose of the work and the manner in which it is treated. It might be the same with human acts, in which case they would be judged only according to their opportunity and their esthetic curves. One must act,—must be always stirring; life is a series of movements, the lines of which interlace. This forms a design. Is it harmonious? That is the whole question; that is all of morality.

Another Point of View.

In order to make a system of morality by separating what is good from what is evil we must have fixed principles, a definite belief,—and we live in an age of skepticism. Doubtless religion is not true, but neither is anti-religion true: truth dwells in a perfect indifference. Governments should restrict themselves to a truly scientific neutrality and consider all manifestations of intelligence or feeling legitimate, whatever their nature. The State should be but a visible providence, a sovereign police that would protect the exercise of all human activity, opposing only those deeds which could fetter the plenitude of all liberties, of every kind.

It is here that one must make a distinction, though it is hardly scientific, between the body and the mind, sensitive matter and the will. Without a doubt acts directed against bodily sensibility should be repressed; but the case is not the same with acts against the intellectual sensibility. Acts called immoral may be prohibited in such a measure as custom recommends; provocations to immoral acts should be permitted. The only crime is the crime of violence. It matters little that I am asked to do something by written or spoken word; the evil begins only when I am made to do so by force.

The Word "God."

Renan loved it, finding it convenient for the connotation of an entire order of ideas, none of which is easily limited verbally. It is undefinable; and moreover, if it were defined it would lose all its value. God is not all that exists; God is all that does not exist. Therein resides the power and the charm of that mysterious word. God is tradition, God is legend, God is folklore, God is a fairy-tale, God is a romance, God is a lie, God is a bell, God is a church window, God is religion, God is all that is absurd, useless, invisible, intangible, all that is nothingness and that symbolizes nothingness. God is the nihil in tenebris—(nothing in the darkness)—men have made of him light, life and love.

Money.

It is hard to read without irritation the old pleasantries of the journalists and the ancient lamentations of socialists upon the worship of the golden calf. To rail at money, to wax indignant against it, are equally silly. Money is nothing; its power is purely symbolical. Money is the sign of liberty. To curse money is to curse liberty,—to curse life, which is nothing, if it be not free.

Popular simplicity adores money. Look at that poor huckstress: she makes the sign of the cross with the first coin she takes in during the morning. A God has come to visit her and bless her. It is a communion at once mystic and real, in the guise of metal.

Money, which is liberty, is also fecundation. It is the universal sperm without which human societies would remain but barren wombs. Paganism, which knew and understood everything, opens to a shower of gold from on high the conquered thighs of DanaË. That is what we should see on our coins, instead of a meaningless head, if we were capable of contemplating without embarrassment that religious tableau.

Antinomy

The most interesting thing about man is man as the human animal. Almost all the rest is folly. As soon as he loses contact with nature, with primitive nature, man wanders. Yet it is this very divagation that is called reason, wisdom, morality. And the natural conduct that man might follow, and which he sometimes does follow, is called unreason, immorality. But, through a balance of logic, this immorality that we disparage we make the sole object of our dreams, our desires, our speeches, our acts, our meditations, our dissertations, our art and our science.

The Supernumerary.

Monsieur Tarde, an ingenious and bitter philosopher, has thus defined life: "The pursuit of the impossible through the useless."

That deserves to endure. It is one of those sentences that one would like to see engraved in gold upon the marbles at street corners. It is undeniable that in endowing man with an immortal soul Christianity gave to life an inestimable worth.

Deprived of the infinite, man has become what he always was: a supernumerary.

He hardly counts; he forms part of the troupe called Humanity; if he misses a cue, he is hissed; and if he drops through the trapdoor another puppet is in readiness to take his place.

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SAND

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.

Werther possesses great interest because Goethe afterward wrote Faust, Wilhelm Meister, and so many other works, all different. The Werther of 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 that Werther is 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.