IT is not alone among the practical manifestations of our life that there is need of making a clearing: the domain of our ideas is in the same case. Anarchy reigns in human thought: we walk in the woods, without compass or sun, lost among the brambles and briars of infinite detail.

When once man has recognized the fact that he has an aim, and that this aim is to be a man, he organizes his thought accordingly. Every mode of thinking or judging which does not make him better and stronger, he rejects as dangerous.

And first of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himself with his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: it isn't a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter. The implements are all in place: everything indicates that this assemblage of means is arranged with view to an end. Throw the room open to apes. They will climb on the benches, swing from the cords, rig themselves in draperies, coif themselves with slippers, juggle with brushes, nibble the colors, and pierce the canvases to see what is behind the paint. I don't question their enjoyment; certainly they must find this kind of exercise extremely interesting. But an atelier is not made to let monkeys loose in. No more is thought a ground for acrobatic evolutions. A man worthy of the name, thinks as he is, as his tastes are: he goes about it with his whole heart, and not with that fitful and sterile curiosity which, under pretext of observing and noting everything, runs the risk of never experiencing a deep and true emotion or accomplishing a right deed.

Another habit in urgent need of correction, ordinary attendant on conventional life, is the mania for examining and analyzing one's self at every turn. I do not invite men to neglect introspection and the examination of conscience. The endeavor to understand one's own mental attitudes and motives of conduct is an essential element of good living. But quite other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant observation of one's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like a piece of mechanism. It is a waste of time, and goes wide of the mark. The man who, to prepare himself the better for walking, should begin by making a rigid anatomical examination of his means of locomotion, would risk dislocating something before he had taken a step. You have what you need to walk with, then forward! Take care not to fall, and use your forces with discretion. Potterers and scruple-mongers are soon reduced to inaction. It needs but a glimmer of common sense to perceive that man is not made to pass his life in a self-centered trance.

And common sense—do you not find what is designated by this name becoming as rare as the common-sense customs of other days? Common sense has become an old story. We must have something new—and we create a factitious existence, a refinement of living, that the vulgar crowd has not the wherewithal to procure. It is so agreeable to be distinguished! Instead of conducting ourselves like rational beings, and using the means most obviously at our command, we arrive, by dint of absolute genius, at the most astonishing singularities. Better off the track than on the main line! All the bodily defects and deformities that orthopedy treats, give but a feeble idea of the humps, the tortuosities, the dislocations we have inflicted upon ourselves in order to depart from simple common sense; and at our own expense we learn that one does not deform himself with impunity. Novelty, after all, is ephemeral. Nothing endures but the eternal commonplace; and if one departs from that, it is to run the most perilous risks. Happy he who is able to reclaim himself, who finds the way back to simplicity.

Good plain sense is not, as is often imagined, the innate possession of the first chance-comer, a mean and paltry equipment that has cost nothing to anyone. I would compare it to those old folk-songs, unfathered but deathless, which seem to have risen out of the very heart of the people. Good sense is a fund slowly and painfully accumulated by the labor of centuries. It is a jewel of the first water, whose value he alone understands who has lost it, or who observes the lives of others who have lost it. For my part, I think no price too great to pay for gaining it and keeping it, for the possession of eyes that see and a judgment that discerns. One takes good care of his sword, that it be not bent or rusted: with greater reason should he give heed to his thought.But let this be well understood: an appeal to common sense is not an appeal to thought that grovels, to narrow positivism which denies everything it cannot see or touch. For to wish that man should be absorbed in material sensations, to the exclusion of the high realities of the inner life, is also a want of good sense. Here we touch upon a tender point, round which the greatest battles of humanity are waging. In truth we are striving to attain a conception of life, searching it out amid countless obscurities and griefs: and everything that touches upon spiritual realities becomes day by day more painful. In the midst of the grave perplexities and transient disorders that accompany great crises of thought, it seems more difficult than ever to escape with any simple principles. Yet necessity itself comes to our aid, as it has done for the men of all times. The program of life is terribly simple, after all, and in the fact that existence so imperiously forces herself upon us, she gives us notice that she precedes any idea of her which we may make for ourselves, and that no one can put off living pending an attempt to understand life. Our philosophies, our explanations, our beliefs are everywhere confronted by facts, and these facts, prodigious, irrefutable, call us to order when we would deduce life from our reasonings, and would wait to act until we have ended philosophizing. It is this happy necessity that prevents the world from stopping while man questions his route. Travelers of a day, we are carried along in a vast movement to which we are called upon to contribute, but which we have not foreseen, nor embraced in its entirety, nor penetrated as to its ultimate aims. Our part is to fill faithfully the rÔle of private, which has devolved upon us, and our thought should adapt itself to the situation. Do not say that we live in more trying times than our ancestors, for things seen from afar are often seen imperfectly: it is moreover scarcely gracious to complain of not having been born in the days of one's grandfather. What we may believe least contestable on the subject is this: from the beginning of the world it has been hard to see clearly; right thinking has been difficult everywhere and always. In the matter the ancients were in no wise privileged above the moderns, and it might be added that there is no difference between men when they are considered from this point of view. Master and servant, teacher and learner, writer and artisan discern truth at the same cost. The light that humanity acquires in advancing is no doubt of the greatest use; but it also multiplies the number and extent of human problems. The difficulty is never removed, the mind always encounters its obstacle. The unknown controls us and hems us in on all sides. But just as one need not exhaust a spring to quench his thirst, so we need not know everything to live. Humanity lives and always has lived on certain elemental provisions.

We will try to point them out. First of all, humanity lives by confidence. In so doing it but reflects, commensurate with its conscious thought, that which is the hidden source of all beings. An imperturbable faith in the stability of the universe and its intelligent ordering, sleeps in everything that exists. The flowers, the trees, the beasts of the field, live in calm strength, in entire security. There is confidence in the falling rain, in dawning day, in the brook running to the sea. Everything that is seems to say: "I am, therefore I should be; there are good reasons for this, rest assured."

So, too, mankind lives by confidence. From the simple fact that he is, man has within him the sufficient reason for his being—a pledge of assurance. He reposes in the power which has willed that he should be. To safeguard this confidence, to see that nothing disconcerts it, to cultivate it, render it more personal, more evident—toward this should tend the first effort of our thought. All that augments confidence within us is good, for from confidence is born the life without haste, tranquil energy, calm action, the love of life and its fruitful labor. Deep-seated confidence is the mysterious spring that sets in motion the energy within us. It is our nutriment. By it man lives, much more than by the bread he eats. And so everything that shakes this confidence is evil—poison, not food.

Dangerous is every system of thought that attacks the very fact of life, declaring it to be an evil. Life has been too often wrongly estimated in this century. What wonder that the tree withers when its roots are watered with corrosives. And there is an extremely simple reflection that might be made in the face of all this negation. You say life is an evil. Well; what remedy for it do you offer? Can you combat it, suppress it? I do not ask you to suppress your own life, to commit suicide;—of what advantage would that be to us?—but to suppress life, not merely human life, but life at its deep and hidden origin, all this upspringing of existence that pushes toward the light and, to your mind, is rushing to misfortune; I ask you to suppress the will to live that trembles through the immensities of space, to suppress in short the source of life. Can you do it? No. Then leave us in peace. Since no one can hold life in check, is it not better to respect it and use it than to go about making other people disgusted with it? When one knows that certain food is dangerous to health, he does not eat it, and when a certain fashion of thinking robs us of confidence, cheerfulness and strength, we should reject that, certain not only that it is a nutriment noxious to the mind, but also that it is false. There is no truth for man but in thoughts that are human, and pessimism is inhuman. Besides, it wants as much in modesty as in logic. To permit one's self to count as evil this prodigious thing that we call life, one needs have seen its very foundation, almost to have made it. What a strange attitude is that of certain great thinkers of our times! They act as if they had created the world, very long ago, in their youth, but decidedly it was a mistake, and they had well repented it.

Let us nourish ourselves from other meat; strengthen our souls with cheering thoughts. What is truest for man is what best fortifies him.

IF mankind lives by confidence, it lives also by hope—that form of confidence which turns toward the future. All life is a result and an aspiration, all that exists supposes an origin and tends toward an end. Life is progression: progression is aspiration. The progress of the future is an infinitude of hope. Hope is at the root of things, and must be reflected in the heart of man. No hope, no life. The same power which brought us into being, urges us to go up higher. What is the meaning of this persistent instinct which pushes us on? The true meaning is that something is to result from life, that out of it is being wrought a good greater than itself, toward which it slowly moves, and that this painful sower called man, needs, like every sower, to count on the morrow. The history of humanity is the history of indomitable hope; otherwise everything would have been over long ago. To press forward under his burdens, to guide himself in the night, to retrieve his falls and his failures, to escape despair even in death, man has need of hoping always, and sometimes against all hope. Here is the cordial that sustains him. Had we only logic, we should have long ago drawn the conclusion: Death has everywhere the last word!—and we should be dead of the idea. But we have hope, and that is why we live and believe in life.

Suso, the great monk and mystic, one of the simplest and best men that ever lived, had a touching custom: whenever he encountered a woman, were she the poorest and oldest, he stepped respectfully aside, though his bare feet must tread among thorns or in the gutter. "I do that," he said, "to render homage to our Holy Lady, the Virgin Mary." Let us offer to hope a like reverence. If we meet it in the shape of a blade of wheat piercing the furrow; a bird brooding on its nest; a poor wounded beast, recovering itself, rising and continuing its way; a peasant ploughing and sowing a field that has been ravaged by flood or hail; a nation slowly repairing its losses and healing its wounds—under whatever guise of humanity or suffering it appears to us, let us salute it! When we encounter it in legends, in untutored songs, in simple creeds, let us still salute it! for it is always the same, indestructible, the immortal daughter of God.

We do not dare hope enough. The men of our day have developed strange timidities. The apprehension that the sky will fall—that acme of absurdity among the fears of our Gallic forefathers—has entered our own hearts. Does the rain-drop doubt the ocean? the ray mistrust the sun? Our senile wisdom has arrived at this prodigy. It resembles those testy old pedagogues whose chief office is to rail at the merry pranks or the youthful enthusiasms of their pupils. It is time to become little children once more, to learn again to stand with clasped hands and wide eyes before the mystery around us; to remember that, in spite of our knowledge, what we know is but a trifle, and that the world is greater than our mind, which is well; for being so prodigious, it must hold in reserve untold resources, and we may allow it some credit without accusing ourselves of improvidence. Let us not treat it as creditors do an insolvent debtor: we should fire its courage, relight the sacred flame of hope. Since the sun still rises, since earth puts forth her blossoms anew, since the bird builds its nest, and the mother smiles at her child, let us have the courage to be men, and commit the rest to Him who has numbered the stars. For my part, I would I might find glowing words to say to whomsoever has lost heart in these times of disillusion: Rouse your courage, hope on; he is sure of being least deluded who has the daring to do that; the most ingenuous hope is nearer truth than the most rational despair.

ANOTHER source of light on the path of human life is goodness. I am not of those who believe in the natural perfection of man, and teach that society corrupts him. On the contrary, of all forms of evil, the one which most dismays me is heredity. But I sometimes ask myself how it is that this effete and deadly virus of low instincts, of vices inoculated in the blood, the whole assemblage of disabilities imposed upon us by the past—how all this has not got the better of us. It must be because of something else. This other thing is love.

Given the unknown brooding above our heads, our limited intelligence, the grievous and contradictory enigma of human destiny, falsehood, hatred, corruption, suffering, death—what can we think, what do? To all these questions a sublime and mysterious voice has answered: Love your fellow-men. Love must indeed be divine, like faith and hope, since she cannot die when so many powers are arrayed against her. She has to combat the natural ferocity of what may be called the beast in man; she has to meet ruse, force, self-interest, above all, ingratitude. How is it that she passes pure and scathless in the midst of these dark enemies, like the prophet of the sacred legend among the roaring beasts? It is because her enemies are of the earth, and love is from above. Horns, teeth, claws, eyes full of murderous fire, are powerless against the swift wing that soars toward the heights and eludes them. Thus love escapes the undertakings of her foes. She does even better: she has sometimes known the fine triumph of winning over her persecutors: she has seen the wild beasts grow calm, lie down at her feet, obey her law.

At the very heart of the Christian faith, the most sublime of its teachings, and to him who penetrates its deepest sense, the most human, is this: To save lost humanity, the invisible God came to dwell among us, in the form of a man, and willed to make Himself known by this single sign: Love.

Healing, consoling, tender to the unfortunate, even to the evil, love engenders light beneath her feet. She clarifies, she simplifies. She has chosen the humblest part—to bind up wounds, wipe away tears, relieve distress, soothe aching hearts, pardon, make peace; yet it is of love that we have the greatest need. And as we meditate on the best way to render thought fruitful, simple, really conformable to our destiny, the method sums itself up in these words: Have confidence and hope; be kind.

I would not discourage lofty speculation, dissuade any one whomsoever from brooding over the problems of the unknown, over the vast abysses of science or philosophy. But we have always to come back from these far journeys to the point where we are, often to a place where we seem to stand marking time with no result. There are conditions of life and social complications in which the sage, the thinker, and the ignorant are alike unable to see clearly. The present age has often brought us face to face with such situations; I am sure that he who meets them with our method will soon recognize its worth.

SINCE I have touched here upon religious ground, at least in a general way, someone may ask me to say in a few simple words, what religion is the best;and I gladly express myself on this subject. But it might be better not to put the question in this form. All religions have, of necessity, certain fixed characteristics, and each has its inherent qualities or defects. Strictly speaking, then, they may be compared among themselves: but there are always involuntary partialities or foregone conclusions. It is better to put the question otherwise, and ask: Is my own religion good, and how may I know it? To this question, this answer: Your religion is good if it is vital and active, if it nourishes in you confidence, hope, love, and a sentiment of the infinite value of existence; if it is allied with what is best in you against what is worst, and holds forever before you the necessity of becoming a new man; if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if it increases your respect for the conscience of others; if it renders forgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty more dear, the beyond less visionary. If it does these things it is good, little matter its name: however rudimentary it may be, when it fills this office it comes from the true source, it binds you to man and to God.

But does it perchance serve to make you think yourself better than others, quibble over texts, wear sour looks, domineer over others' consciences or give your own over to bondage; stifle your scruples, follow religious forms for fashion or gain, do good in the hope of escaping future punishment?—oh, then, if you proclaim yourself the follower of Buddha, Moses, Mahomet, or even Christ, your religion is worthless—it separates you from God and man.

I have not perhaps the right to speak thus in my own name; but others have so spoken before me who are greater than I, and notably He who recounted to the questioning scribe the parable of the Good Samaritan. I intrench myself behind His authority.

Back to contents