"DEAR UNCLE,—I shall soon be leaving this part of the world,
where I could never bear to live. I find no one here who likes
what I like, who works at my work, or is amazed at what amazes me.
Thrown back on myself, I eat my heart out in misery. My long and
patient study of Society here has brought me to melancholy
conclusions, in which doubt predominates.
"Here, money is the mainspring of everything. Money is
indispensable, even for going without money. But though that dross
is necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have not
courage enough to make it the sole motive power of my thoughts. To
make a fortune, I must take up a profession; in two words, I must,
by acquiring some privilege of position or of self-advertisement,
either legal or ingeniously contrived, purchase the right of
taking day by day out of somebody else's purse a certain sum
which, by the end of the year, would amount to a small capital;
and this, in twenty years, would hardly secure an income of four
or five thousand francs to a man who deals honestly. An advocate,
a notary, a merchant, any recognized professional, has earned a
living for his later days in the course of fifteen or sixteen
years after ending his apprenticeship.
"But I have never felt fit for work of this kind. I prefer thought
to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity. I
am absolutely devoid of the constant attention indispensable to
the making of a fortune. Any mercantile venture, any need for
using other people's money would bring me to grief, and I should
be ruined. Though I have nothing, at least at the moment, I owe
nothing. The man who gives his life to the achievement of great
things in the sphere of intellect, needs very little; still,
though twenty sous a day would be enough, I do not possess that
small income for my laborious idleness. When I wish to cogitate,
want drives me out of the sanctuary where my mind has its being.
What is to become of me?
"I am not frightened at poverty. If it were not that beggars are
imprisoned, branded, scorned, I would beg, to enable me to solve
at my leisure the problems that haunt me. Still, this sublime
resignation, by which I might emancipate my mind, through
abstracting it from the body, would not serve my end. I should
still need money to devote myself to certain experiments. But for
that, I would accept the outward indigence of a sage possessed of
both heaven and heart. A man need only never stoop, to remain
lofty in poverty. He who struggles and endures, while marching on
to a glorious end, presents a noble spectacle; but who can have
the strength to fight here? We can climb cliffs, but it is
unendurable to remain for ever tramping the mud. Everything here
checks the flight of the spirit that strives towards the future.
"I should not be afraid of myself in a desert cave; I am afraid of
myself here. In the desert I should be alone with myself,
undisturbed; here man has a thousand wants which drag him down.
You go out walking, absorbed in dreams; the voice of the beggar
asking an alms brings you back to this world of hunger and thirst.
You need money only to take a walk. Your organs of sense,
perpetually wearied by trifles, never get any rest. The poet's
sensitive nerves are perpetually shocked, and what ought to be his
glory becomes his torment; his imagination is his cruelest enemy.
The injured workman, the poor mother in childbed, the prostitute
who has fallen ill, the foundling, the infirm and aged—even vice
and crime here find a refuge and charity; but the world is
merciless to the inventor, to the man who thinks. Here everything
must show an immediate and practical result. Fruitless attempts
are mocked at, though they may lead to the greatest discoveries;
the deep and untiring study that demands long concentrations of
every faculty is not valued here. The State might pay talent as it
pays the bayonet; but it is afraid of being taken in by mere
cleverness, as if genius could be counterfeited for any length of
time.
"Ah, my dear uncle, when monastic solitude was destroyed, uprooted
from its home at the foot of mountains, under green and silent
shade, asylums ought to have been provided for those suffering
souls who, by an idea, promote the progress of nations or prepare
some new and fruitful development of science.
where I could never bear to live. I find no one here who likes
what I like, who works at my work, or is amazed at what amazes me.
Thrown back on myself, I eat my heart out in misery. My long and
patient study of Society here has brought me to melancholy
conclusions, in which doubt predominates.
"Here, money is the mainspring of everything. Money is
indispensable, even for going without money. But though that dross
is necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have not
courage enough to make it the sole motive power of my thoughts. To
make a fortune, I must take up a profession; in two words, I must,
by acquiring some privilege of position or of self-advertisement,
either legal or ingeniously contrived, purchase the right of
taking day by day out of somebody else's purse a certain sum
which, by the end of the year, would amount to a small capital;
and this, in twenty years, would hardly secure an income of four
or five thousand francs to a man who deals honestly. An advocate,
a notary, a merchant, any recognized professional, has earned a
living for his later days in the course of fifteen or sixteen
years after ending his apprenticeship.
"But I have never felt fit for work of this kind. I prefer thought
to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity. I
am absolutely devoid of the constant attention indispensable to
the making of a fortune. Any mercantile venture, any need for
using other people's money would bring me to grief, and I should
be ruined. Though I have nothing, at least at the moment, I owe
nothing. The man who gives his life to the achievement of great
things in the sphere of intellect, needs very little; still,
though twenty sous a day would be enough, I do not possess that
small income for my laborious idleness. When I wish to cogitate,
want drives me out of the sanctuary where my mind has its being.
What is to become of me?
"I am not frightened at poverty. If it were not that beggars are
imprisoned, branded, scorned, I would beg, to enable me to solve
at my leisure the problems that haunt me. Still, this sublime
resignation, by which I might emancipate my mind, through
abstracting it from the body, would not serve my end. I should
still need money to devote myself to certain experiments. But for
that, I would accept the outward indigence of a sage possessed of
both heaven and heart. A man need only never stoop, to remain
lofty in poverty. He who struggles and endures, while marching on
to a glorious end, presents a noble spectacle; but who can have
the strength to fight here? We can climb cliffs, but it is
unendurable to remain for ever tramping the mud. Everything here
checks the flight of the spirit that strives towards the future.
"I should not be afraid of myself in a desert cave; I am afraid of
myself here. In the desert I should be alone with myself,
undisturbed; here man has a thousand wants which drag him down.
You go out walking, absorbed in dreams; the voice of the beggar
asking an alms brings you back to this world of hunger and thirst.
You need money only to take a walk. Your organs of sense,
perpetually wearied by trifles, never get any rest. The poet's
sensitive nerves are perpetually shocked, and what ought to be his
glory becomes his torment; his imagination is his cruelest enemy.
The injured workman, the poor mother in childbed, the prostitute
who has fallen ill, the foundling, the infirm and aged—even vice
and crime here find a refuge and charity; but the world is
merciless to the inventor, to the man who thinks. Here everything
must show an immediate and practical result. Fruitless attempts
are mocked at, though they may lead to the greatest discoveries;
the deep and untiring study that demands long concentrations of
every faculty is not valued here. The State might pay talent as it
pays the bayonet; but it is afraid of being taken in by mere
cleverness, as if genius could be counterfeited for any length of
time.
"Ah, my dear uncle, when monastic solitude was destroyed, uprooted
from its home at the foot of mountains, under green and silent
shade, asylums ought to have been provided for those suffering
souls who, by an idea, promote the progress of nations or prepare
some new and fruitful development of science.
"September 20th.
"The love of study brought me hither, as you know. I have met
really learned men, amazing for the most part; but the lack of
unity in scientific work almost nullifies their efforts. There is
no Head of instruction or of scientific research. At the Museum a
professor argues to prove that another in the Rue Saint-Jacques
talks nonsense. The lecturer at the College of Medicine abuses him
of the College de France. When I first arrived, I went to hear an
old Academician who taught five hundred youths that Corneille was
a haughty and powerful genius; Racine, elegiac and graceful;
Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire, supremely witty; Bossuet and
Pascal, incomparable in argument. A professor of philosophy may
make a name by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another
discourses on the history of words, without troubling himself
about ideas. One explains Aeschylus, another tells you that
communes were communes, and neither more nor less. These original
and brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours,
constitute the higher education which is to lead to giant strides
in human knowledge.
"If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect it of
being afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, might
bring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. Then nations
would go too far and too fast; so professors are appointed to
produce simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoid of
method or any notion of the future?
"The Institut might be the central government of the moral and
intellectual world; but it has been ruined lately by its
subdivision into separate academies. So human science marches on,
without a guide, without a system, and floats haphazard with no
road traced out.
"This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well as in
science. In the order of nature means are simple, the end is grand
and marvelous; here in science as in government, the means are
stupendous, the end is mean. The force which in nature proceeds at
an equal pace, and of which the sum is constantly being added to
itself—the A + A from which everything is produced—is
destructive in society. Politics, at the present time, place human
forces in antagonism to neutralize each other, instead of
combining them to promote their action to some definite end.
"Looking at Europe alone, from Caesar to Constantine, from the
puny Constantine to the great Attila, from the Huns to
Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from Leo X., to Philip
II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV.; from Venice to England, from
England to Napoleon, from Napoleon to England, I see no fixed
purpose in politics; its constant agitation has led to no
progress.
"Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in monuments, and to
their happiness in the welfare of individuals. Are modern
monuments as fine as those of the ancients? I doubt it. The arts,
which are the direct outcome of the individual, the products of
genius or of handicraft, have not advanced much. The pleasures of
Lucullus were as good as those of Samuel Bernard, of Beaujon, or
of the King of Bavaria. And then human longevity has diminished.
"Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the same; might
is his only law, and success his only wisdom.
"Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a different hue to
the arena in which youthful nations disport themselves.
"No development of politics has hindered civilization, with its
riches, its manners, its alliance of the strong against the weak,
its ideas, and its delights, from moving from Memphis to Tyre,
from Tyre to Baalbek, from Tadmor to Carthage, from Carthage to
Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice,
from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England—while no trace is
left of Memphis, of Tyre, of Carthage, of Rome, of Venice, or
Madrid. The soul of those great bodies has fled. Not one of them
has preserved itself from destruction, nor formulated this axiom:
When the effect produced ceases to be in a ratio to its cause,
disorganization follows.
"The most subtle genius can discover no common bond between great
social facts. No political theory has ever lasted. Governments
pass away, as men do, without handing down any lesson, and no
system gives birth to a system better than that which came before
it. What can we say about politics when a Government directly
referred to God perished in India and Egypt; when the rule of the
Sword and of the Tiara are past; when Monarchy is dying; when the
Government of the People has never been alive; when no scheme of
intellectual power as applied to material interests has ever
proved durable, and everything at this day remains to be done all
over again, as it has been at every period when man has turned to
cry out, 'I am in torment!'
"The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest achievement, is
the most Draconian work I know of. Territorial subdivision carried
out to the uttermost, and its principle confirmed by the equal
division of property generally, must result in the degeneracy of
the nation and the death of the Arts and Sciences. The land, too
much broken up, is cultivated only with cereals and small crops;
the forests, and consequently the rivers, are disappearing; oxen
and horses are no longer bred. Means are lacking both for attack
and for resistance. If we should be invaded, the people must be
crushed; it has lost its mainspring—its leaders. This is the
history of deserts!
"Thus the science of politics has no definite principles, and it
can have no fixity; it is the spirit of the hour, the perpetual
application of strength proportioned to the necessities of the
moment. The man who should foresee two centuries ahead would die
on the place of execution, loaded with the imprecations of the
mob, or else—which seems worse—would be lashed with the myriad
whips of ridicule. Nations are but individuals, neither wiser nor
stronger than man, and their destinies are identical. If we
reflect on man, is not that to consider mankind?
"By studying the spectacle of society perpetually storm-tossed in
its foundations as well as in its results, in its causes as well
as in its actions, while philanthropy is but a splendid mistake,
and progress is vanity, I have been confirmed in this truth: Life
is within and not without us; to rise above men, to govern them,
is only the part of an aggrandized school-master; and those men
who are capable of rising to the level whence they can enjoy a
view of the world should not look at their own feet.
really learned men, amazing for the most part; but the lack of
unity in scientific work almost nullifies their efforts. There is
no Head of instruction or of scientific research. At the Museum a
professor argues to prove that another in the Rue Saint-Jacques
talks nonsense. The lecturer at the College of Medicine abuses him
of the College de France. When I first arrived, I went to hear an
old Academician who taught five hundred youths that Corneille was
a haughty and powerful genius; Racine, elegiac and graceful;
Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire, supremely witty; Bossuet and
Pascal, incomparable in argument. A professor of philosophy may
make a name by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another
discourses on the history of words, without troubling himself
about ideas. One explains Aeschylus, another tells you that
communes were communes, and neither more nor less. These original
and brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours,
constitute the higher education which is to lead to giant strides
in human knowledge.
"If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect it of
being afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, might
bring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. Then nations
would go too far and too fast; so professors are appointed to
produce simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoid of
method or any notion of the future?
"The Institut might be the central government of the moral and
intellectual world; but it has been ruined lately by its
subdivision into separate academies. So human science marches on,
without a guide, without a system, and floats haphazard with no
road traced out.
"This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well as in
science. In the order of nature means are simple, the end is grand
and marvelous; here in science as in government, the means are
stupendous, the end is mean. The force which in nature proceeds at
an equal pace, and of which the sum is constantly being added to
itself—the A + A from which everything is produced—is
destructive in society. Politics, at the present time, place human
forces in antagonism to neutralize each other, instead of
combining them to promote their action to some definite end.
"Looking at Europe alone, from Caesar to Constantine, from the
puny Constantine to the great Attila, from the Huns to
Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from Leo X., to Philip
II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV.; from Venice to England, from
England to Napoleon, from Napoleon to England, I see no fixed
purpose in politics; its constant agitation has led to no
progress.
"Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in monuments, and to
their happiness in the welfare of individuals. Are modern
monuments as fine as those of the ancients? I doubt it. The arts,
which are the direct outcome of the individual, the products of
genius or of handicraft, have not advanced much. The pleasures of
Lucullus were as good as those of Samuel Bernard, of Beaujon, or
of the King of Bavaria. And then human longevity has diminished.
"Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the same; might
is his only law, and success his only wisdom.
"Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a different hue to
the arena in which youthful nations disport themselves.
"No development of politics has hindered civilization, with its
riches, its manners, its alliance of the strong against the weak,
its ideas, and its delights, from moving from Memphis to Tyre,
from Tyre to Baalbek, from Tadmor to Carthage, from Carthage to
Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice,
from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England—while no trace is
left of Memphis, of Tyre, of Carthage, of Rome, of Venice, or
Madrid. The soul of those great bodies has fled. Not one of them
has preserved itself from destruction, nor formulated this axiom:
When the effect produced ceases to be in a ratio to its cause,
disorganization follows.
"The most subtle genius can discover no common bond between great
social facts. No political theory has ever lasted. Governments
pass away, as men do, without handing down any lesson, and no
system gives birth to a system better than that which came before
it. What can we say about politics when a Government directly
referred to God perished in India and Egypt; when the rule of the
Sword and of the Tiara are past; when Monarchy is dying; when the
Government of the People has never been alive; when no scheme of
intellectual power as applied to material interests has ever
proved durable, and everything at this day remains to be done all
over again, as it has been at every period when man has turned to
cry out, 'I am in torment!'
"The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest achievement, is
the most Draconian work I know of. Territorial subdivision carried
out to the uttermost, and its principle confirmed by the equal
division of property generally, must result in the degeneracy of
the nation and the death of the Arts and Sciences. The land, too
much broken up, is cultivated only with cereals and small crops;
the forests, and consequently the rivers, are disappearing; oxen
and horses are no longer bred. Means are lacking both for attack
and for resistance. If we should be invaded, the people must be
crushed; it has lost its mainspring—its leaders. This is the
history of deserts!
"Thus the science of politics has no definite principles, and it
can have no fixity; it is the spirit of the hour, the perpetual
application of strength proportioned to the necessities of the
moment. The man who should foresee two centuries ahead would die
on the place of execution, loaded with the imprecations of the
mob, or else—which seems worse—would be lashed with the myriad
whips of ridicule. Nations are but individuals, neither wiser nor
stronger than man, and their destinies are identical. If we
reflect on man, is not that to consider mankind?
"By studying the spectacle of society perpetually storm-tossed in
its foundations as well as in its results, in its causes as well
as in its actions, while philanthropy is but a splendid mistake,
and progress is vanity, I have been confirmed in this truth: Life
is within and not without us; to rise above men, to govern them,
is only the part of an aggrandized school-master; and those men
who are capable of rising to the level whence they can enjoy a
view of the world should not look at their own feet.
"November 4th.
"I am no doubt occupied with weighty thoughts, I am on the way to
certain discoveries, an invincible power bears me toward a
luminary which shone at an early age on the darkness of my moral
life; but what name can I give to the power that ties my hands and
shuts my mouth, and drags me in a direction opposite to my
vocation? I must leave Paris, bid farewell to the books in the
libraries, those noble centres of illumination, those kindly and
always accessible sages, and the younger geniuses with whom I
sympathize. Who is it that drives me away? Chance or Providence?
"The two ideas represented by those words are irreconcilable. If
Chance does not exist, we must admit fatalism, that is to say, the
compulsory co-ordination of things under the rule of a general
plan. Why then do we rebel? If man is not free, what becomes of
the scaffolding of his moral sense? Or, if he can control his
destiny, if by his own freewill he can interfere with the
execution of the general plan, what becomes of God?
"Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the answer: I
find in myself axioms that need developing. But why then have I
such vast faculties without being suffered to use them? If my
suffering could serve as an example, I could understand it; but
no, I suffer unknown.
"This is perhaps as much the act of Providence as the fate of the
flower that dies unseen in the heart of the virgin forest, where
no one can enjoy its perfume or admire its splendor. Just as that
blossom vainly sheds its fragrance to the solitude, so do I, here
in the garret, give birth to ideas that no one can grasp.
"Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in front of my
window with a young doctor named Meyraux. We talked as men do whom
misfortune has joined in brotherhood, and I said to him:
"'I am going away; you are staying. Take up my ideas and develop
them.'
"'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret: 'my feeble health
cannot stand so much work, and I shall die young of my struggle
with penury.'
"We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first met at the
Comparative Anatomy course, and in the galleries of the Museum,
attracted thither by the same study—the unity of geological
structure. In him this was the presentiment of genius sent to open
a new path in the fallows of intellect; in me it was a deduction
from a general system.
"My point is to ascertain the real relation that may exist between
God and man. Is not this a need of the age? Without the highest
assurance, it is impossible to put bit and bridle on the social
factions that have been let loose by the spirit of scepticism and
discussion, and which are now crying aloud: 'Show us a way in
which we may walk and find no pitfalls in our way!'
"You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do with a
question of such importance to the future of society. Must we not
attain to the conviction that man is the end of all earthly means
before we ask whether he too is not the means to some end? If man
is bound up with everything, is there not something above him with
which he again is bound up? If he is the end-all of the explained
transmutations that lead up to him, must he not be also the link
between the visible and invisible creations?
"The activity of the universe is not absurd; it must tend to an
end, and that end is surely not a social body constituted as ours
is! There is a fearful gulf between us and heaven. In our present
existence we can neither be always happy nor always in torment;
must there not be some tremendous change to bring about Paradise
and Hell, two images without which God cannot exist to the mind of
the vulgar? I know that a compromise was made by the invention of
the Soul; but it is repugnant to me to make God answerable for
human baseness, for our disenchantments, our aversions, our
degeneracy.
"Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle within us
which can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? How conceive of
immaterial faculties which matter can conquer, and whose exercise
is suspended by a grain of opium? How imagine that we shall be
able to feel when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Why
must God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is the vitality
of matter in its innumerable manifestations—the effect of its
instincts—at all more explicable than the effects of the mind? Is
not the motion given to the worlds enough to prove God's
existence, without our plunging into absurd speculations suggested
by pride? And if we pass, after our trials, from a perishable
state of being to a higher existence, is not that enough for a
creature that is distinguished from other creatures only by more
perfect instincts? If in moral philosophy there is not a single
principle which does not lead to the absurd, or cannot be
disproved by evidence, is it not high time that we should set to
work to seek such dogmas as are written in the innermost nature of
things? Must we not reverse philosophical science?
"We trouble ourselves very little about the supposed void that
must have pre-existed for us, and we try to fathom the supposed
void that lies before us. We make God responsible for the future,
but we do not expect Him to account for the past. And yet it is
quite as desirable to know whether we have any roots in the past
as to discover whether we are inseparable from the future.
"We have been Deists or Atheists in one direction only.
"Is the world eternal? Was the world created? We can conceive of
no middle term between these two propositions; one, then, is true
and the other false! Take your choice. Whichever it may be, God,
as our reason depicts Him, must be deposed, and that amounts to
denial. The world is eternal: then, beyond question, God has had
it forced upon Him. The world was created: then God is an
impossibility. How could He have subsisted through an eternity,
not knowing that He would presently want to create the world? How
could He have failed to foresee all the results?
"Whence did He derive the essence of creation? Evidently from
Himself. If, then, the world proceeds from God, how can you
account for evil? That Evil should proceed from Good is absurd. If
evil does not exist, what do you make of social life and its laws?
On all hands we find a precipice! On every side a gulf in which
reason is lost! Then social science must be altogether
reconstructed.
"Listen to me, uncle; until some splendid genius shall have taken
account of the obvious inequality of intellects and the general
sense of humanity, the word God will be constantly arraigned, and
Society will rest on shifting sands. The secret of the various
moral zones through which man passes will be discovered by the
analysis of the animal type as a whole. That animal type has
hitherto been studied with reference only to its differences, not
to its similitudes; in its organic manifestations, not in its
faculties. Animal faculties are perfected in direct transmission,
in obedience to laws which remain to be discovered. These
faculties correspond to the forces which express them, and those
forces are essentially material and divisible.
"Material faculties! Reflect on this juxtaposition of words. Is
not this a problem as insoluble as that of the first communication
of motion to matter—an unsounded gulf of which the difficulties
were transposed rather than removed by Newton's system? Again, the
universal assimilation of light by everything that exists on earth
demands a new study of our globe. The same animal differs in the
tropics of India and in the North. Under the angular or the
vertical incidence of the sun's rays nature is developed the same,
but not the same; identical in its principles, but totally
dissimilar in its outcome. The phenomenon that amazes our eyes in
the zoological world when we compare the butterflies of Brazil
with those of Europe, is even more startling in the world of Mind.
A particular facial angle, a certain amount of brain convolutions,
are indispensable to produce Columbus, Raphael, Napoleon, Laplace,
or Beethoven; the sunless valley produces the cretin—draw your
own conclusions. Why such differences, due to the more or less
ample diffusion of light to men? The masses of suffering humanity,
more or less active, fed, and enlightened, are a difficulty to be
accounted for, crying out against God.
"Why in great joy do we always want to quit the earth? whence
comes the longing to rise which every creature has known or will
know? Motion is a great soul, and its alliance with matter is just
as difficult to account for as the origin of thought in man. In
these days science is one; it is impossible to touch politics
independent of moral questions, and these are bound up with
scientific questions. It seems to me that we are on the eve of a
great human struggle; the forces are there; only I do not see the
General.
certain discoveries, an invincible power bears me toward a
luminary which shone at an early age on the darkness of my moral
life; but what name can I give to the power that ties my hands and
shuts my mouth, and drags me in a direction opposite to my
vocation? I must leave Paris, bid farewell to the books in the
libraries, those noble centres of illumination, those kindly and
always accessible sages, and the younger geniuses with whom I
sympathize. Who is it that drives me away? Chance or Providence?
"The two ideas represented by those words are irreconcilable. If
Chance does not exist, we must admit fatalism, that is to say, the
compulsory co-ordination of things under the rule of a general
plan. Why then do we rebel? If man is not free, what becomes of
the scaffolding of his moral sense? Or, if he can control his
destiny, if by his own freewill he can interfere with the
execution of the general plan, what becomes of God?
"Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the answer: I
find in myself axioms that need developing. But why then have I
such vast faculties without being suffered to use them? If my
suffering could serve as an example, I could understand it; but
no, I suffer unknown.
"This is perhaps as much the act of Providence as the fate of the
flower that dies unseen in the heart of the virgin forest, where
no one can enjoy its perfume or admire its splendor. Just as that
blossom vainly sheds its fragrance to the solitude, so do I, here
in the garret, give birth to ideas that no one can grasp.
"Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in front of my
window with a young doctor named Meyraux. We talked as men do whom
misfortune has joined in brotherhood, and I said to him:
"'I am going away; you are staying. Take up my ideas and develop
them.'
"'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret: 'my feeble health
cannot stand so much work, and I shall die young of my struggle
with penury.'
"We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first met at the
Comparative Anatomy course, and in the galleries of the Museum,
attracted thither by the same study—the unity of geological
structure. In him this was the presentiment of genius sent to open
a new path in the fallows of intellect; in me it was a deduction
from a general system.
"My point is to ascertain the real relation that may exist between
God and man. Is not this a need of the age? Without the highest
assurance, it is impossible to put bit and bridle on the social
factions that have been let loose by the spirit of scepticism and
discussion, and which are now crying aloud: 'Show us a way in
which we may walk and find no pitfalls in our way!'
"You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do with a
question of such importance to the future of society. Must we not
attain to the conviction that man is the end of all earthly means
before we ask whether he too is not the means to some end? If man
is bound up with everything, is there not something above him with
which he again is bound up? If he is the end-all of the explained
transmutations that lead up to him, must he not be also the link
between the visible and invisible creations?
"The activity of the universe is not absurd; it must tend to an
end, and that end is surely not a social body constituted as ours
is! There is a fearful gulf between us and heaven. In our present
existence we can neither be always happy nor always in torment;
must there not be some tremendous change to bring about Paradise
and Hell, two images without which God cannot exist to the mind of
the vulgar? I know that a compromise was made by the invention of
the Soul; but it is repugnant to me to make God answerable for
human baseness, for our disenchantments, our aversions, our
degeneracy.
"Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle within us
which can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? How conceive of
immaterial faculties which matter can conquer, and whose exercise
is suspended by a grain of opium? How imagine that we shall be
able to feel when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Why
must God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is the vitality
of matter in its innumerable manifestations—the effect of its
instincts—at all more explicable than the effects of the mind? Is
not the motion given to the worlds enough to prove God's
existence, without our plunging into absurd speculations suggested
by pride? And if we pass, after our trials, from a perishable
state of being to a higher existence, is not that enough for a
creature that is distinguished from other creatures only by more
perfect instincts? If in moral philosophy there is not a single
principle which does not lead to the absurd, or cannot be
disproved by evidence, is it not high time that we should set to
work to seek such dogmas as are written in the innermost nature of
things? Must we not reverse philosophical science?
"We trouble ourselves very little about the supposed void that
must have pre-existed for us, and we try to fathom the supposed
void that lies before us. We make God responsible for the future,
but we do not expect Him to account for the past. And yet it is
quite as desirable to know whether we have any roots in the past
as to discover whether we are inseparable from the future.
"We have been Deists or Atheists in one direction only.
"Is the world eternal? Was the world created? We can conceive of
no middle term between these two propositions; one, then, is true
and the other false! Take your choice. Whichever it may be, God,
as our reason depicts Him, must be deposed, and that amounts to
denial. The world is eternal: then, beyond question, God has had
it forced upon Him. The world was created: then God is an
impossibility. How could He have subsisted through an eternity,
not knowing that He would presently want to create the world? How
could He have failed to foresee all the results?
"Whence did He derive the essence of creation? Evidently from
Himself. If, then, the world proceeds from God, how can you
account for evil? That Evil should proceed from Good is absurd. If
evil does not exist, what do you make of social life and its laws?
On all hands we find a precipice! On every side a gulf in which
reason is lost! Then social science must be altogether
reconstructed.
"Listen to me, uncle; until some splendid genius shall have taken
account of the obvious inequality of intellects and the general
sense of humanity, the word God will be constantly arraigned, and
Society will rest on shifting sands. The secret of the various
moral zones through which man passes will be discovered by the
analysis of the animal type as a whole. That animal type has
hitherto been studied with reference only to its differences, not
to its similitudes; in its organic manifestations, not in its
faculties. Animal faculties are perfected in direct transmission,
in obedience to laws which remain to be discovered. These
faculties correspond to the forces which express them, and those
forces are essentially material and divisible.
"Material faculties! Reflect on this juxtaposition of words. Is
not this a problem as insoluble as that of the first communication
of motion to matter—an unsounded gulf of which the difficulties
were transposed rather than removed by Newton's system? Again, the
universal assimilation of light by everything that exists on earth
demands a new study of our globe. The same animal differs in the
tropics of India and in the North. Under the angular or the
vertical incidence of the sun's rays nature is developed the same,
but not the same; identical in its principles, but totally
dissimilar in its outcome. The phenomenon that amazes our eyes in
the zoological world when we compare the butterflies of Brazil
with those of Europe, is even more startling in the world of Mind.
A particular facial angle, a certain amount of brain convolutions,
are indispensable to produce Columbus, Raphael, Napoleon, Laplace,
or Beethoven; the sunless valley produces the cretin—draw your
own conclusions. Why such differences, due to the more or less
ample diffusion of light to men? The masses of suffering humanity,
more or less active, fed, and enlightened, are a difficulty to be
accounted for, crying out against God.
"Why in great joy do we always want to quit the earth? whence
comes the longing to rise which every creature has known or will
know? Motion is a great soul, and its alliance with matter is just
as difficult to account for as the origin of thought in man. In
these days science is one; it is impossible to touch politics
independent of moral questions, and these are bound up with
scientific questions. It seems to me that we are on the eve of a
great human struggle; the forces are there; only I do not see the
General.
"November 25.
"Believe me, dear uncle, it is hard to give up the life that is in
us without a pang. I am returning to Blois with a heavy grip at my
heart; I shall die then, taking with me some useful truths. No
personal interest debases my regrets. Is earthly fame a guerdon to
those who believe that they will mount to a higher sphere?
"I am by no means in love with the two syllables Lam and bert;
whether spoken with respect or with contempt over my grave, they
can make no change in my ultimate destiny. I feel myself strong
and energetic; I might become a power; I feel in myself a life so
luminous that it might enlighten a world, and yet I am shut up in
a sort of mineral, as perhaps indeed are the colors you admire on
the neck of an Indian bird. I should need to embrace the whole
world, to clasp and re-create it; but those who have done this,
who have thus embraced and remoulded it began—did they not?—by
being a wheel in the machine. I can only be crushed. Mahomet had
the sword; Jesus had the cross; I shall die unknown. I shall be at
Blois for a day, and then in my coffin.
"Do you know why I have come back to Swedenborg after vast studies
of all religions, and after proving to myself, by reading all the
works published within the last sixty years by the patient
English, by Germany, and by France, how deeply true were my
youthful views about the Bible? Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes
all the religions—or rather the one religion—of humanity. Though
forms of worship are infinitely various, neither their true
meaning nor their metaphysical interpretation has ever varied. In
short, man has, and has had, but one religion.
"Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, the three primitive creeds,
originating as they did in Thibet, in the valley of the Indus, and
on the vast plains of the Ganges, ended their warfare some
thousand years before the birth of Christ by adopting the Hindoo
Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity. From this dogma Magianism
arose in Persia; in Egypt, the African beliefs and the Mosaic law;
the worship of the Cabiri, and the polytheism of Greece and Rome.
While by this ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths
became adapted to the imaginations of various races in the lands
they reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to
be demi-gods—Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest
—Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions, lived
in India, and founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers
two hundred millions more believers than Christianity can show,
while it certainly influenced the powerful Will both of Jesus and
of Confucius.
"Then Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently Mahomet fused
Judaism and Christianity, the Bible and the Gospel, in one book,
the Koran, adapting them to the apprehension of the Arab race.
Finally, Swedenborg borrowed from Magianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism,
and Christian mysticism all the truth and divine beauty that those
four great religious books hold in common, and added to them a
doctrine, a basis of reasoning, that may be termed mathematical.
"Any man who plunges into these religious waters, of which the
sources are not all known, will find proofs that Zoroaster, Moses,
Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and Swedenborg had identical
principles and aimed at identical ends.
"The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the Buddha of
the North. Obscure and diffuse as his writings are, we find in
them the elements of a magnificent conception of society. His
Theocracy is sublime, and his creed is the only acceptable one to
superior souls. He alone brings man into immediate communion with
God, he gives a thirst for God, he has freed the majesty of God
from the trappings in which other human dogmas have disguised Him.
He left Him where He is, making His myriad creations and creatures
gravitate towards Him through successive transformations which
promise a more immediate and more natural future than the Catholic
idea of Eternity. Swedenborg has absolved God from the reproach
attaching to Him in the estimation of tender souls for the
perpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of a moment—a system of
injustice and cruelty.
"Each man may know for himself what hope he has of life eternal,
and whether this world has any rational sense. I mean to make the
attempt. And this attempt may save the world, just as much as the
cross at Jerusalem or the sword at Mecca. These were both the
offspring of the desert. Of the thirty-three years of Christ's
life, we only know the history of nine; His life of seclusion
prepared Him for His life of glory. And I too crave for the
desert!"
us without a pang. I am returning to Blois with a heavy grip at my
heart; I shall die then, taking with me some useful truths. No
personal interest debases my regrets. Is earthly fame a guerdon to
those who believe that they will mount to a higher sphere?
"I am by no means in love with the two syllables Lam and bert;
whether spoken with respect or with contempt over my grave, they
can make no change in my ultimate destiny. I feel myself strong
and energetic; I might become a power; I feel in myself a life so
luminous that it might enlighten a world, and yet I am shut up in
a sort of mineral, as perhaps indeed are the colors you admire on
the neck of an Indian bird. I should need to embrace the whole
world, to clasp and re-create it; but those who have done this,
who have thus embraced and remoulded it began—did they not?—by
being a wheel in the machine. I can only be crushed. Mahomet had
the sword; Jesus had the cross; I shall die unknown. I shall be at
Blois for a day, and then in my coffin.
"Do you know why I have come back to Swedenborg after vast studies
of all religions, and after proving to myself, by reading all the
works published within the last sixty years by the patient
English, by Germany, and by France, how deeply true were my
youthful views about the Bible? Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes
all the religions—or rather the one religion—of humanity. Though
forms of worship are infinitely various, neither their true
meaning nor their metaphysical interpretation has ever varied. In
short, man has, and has had, but one religion.
"Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, the three primitive creeds,
originating as they did in Thibet, in the valley of the Indus, and
on the vast plains of the Ganges, ended their warfare some
thousand years before the birth of Christ by adopting the Hindoo
Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity. From this dogma Magianism
arose in Persia; in Egypt, the African beliefs and the Mosaic law;
the worship of the Cabiri, and the polytheism of Greece and Rome.
While by this ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths
became adapted to the imaginations of various races in the lands
they reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to
be demi-gods—Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest
—Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions, lived
in India, and founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers
two hundred millions more believers than Christianity can show,
while it certainly influenced the powerful Will both of Jesus and
of Confucius.
"Then Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently Mahomet fused
Judaism and Christianity, the Bible and the Gospel, in one book,
the Koran, adapting them to the apprehension of the Arab race.
Finally, Swedenborg borrowed from Magianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism,
and Christian mysticism all the truth and divine beauty that those
four great religious books hold in common, and added to them a
doctrine, a basis of reasoning, that may be termed mathematical.
"Any man who plunges into these religious waters, of which the
sources are not all known, will find proofs that Zoroaster, Moses,
Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and Swedenborg had identical
principles and aimed at identical ends.
"The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the Buddha of
the North. Obscure and diffuse as his writings are, we find in
them the elements of a magnificent conception of society. His
Theocracy is sublime, and his creed is the only acceptable one to
superior souls. He alone brings man into immediate communion with
God, he gives a thirst for God, he has freed the majesty of God
from the trappings in which other human dogmas have disguised Him.
He left Him where He is, making His myriad creations and creatures
gravitate towards Him through successive transformations which
promise a more immediate and more natural future than the Catholic
idea of Eternity. Swedenborg has absolved God from the reproach
attaching to Him in the estimation of tender souls for the
perpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of a moment—a system of
injustice and cruelty.
"Each man may know for himself what hope he has of life eternal,
and whether this world has any rational sense. I mean to make the
attempt. And this attempt may save the world, just as much as the
cross at Jerusalem or the sword at Mecca. These were both the
offspring of the desert. Of the thirty-three years of Christ's
life, we only know the history of nine; His life of seclusion
prepared Him for His life of glory. And I too crave for the
desert!"
Notwithstanding the difficulties of the task, I have felt it my duty to depict Lambert's boyhood, the unknown life to which I owe the only happy hours, the only pleasant memories, of my early days. Excepting during those two years I had nothing but annoyances and weariness. Though some happiness was mine at a later time, it was always incomplete.
I have been diffuse, I know; but in default of entering into the whole wide heart and brain of Louis Lambert—two words which inadequately express the infinite aspects of his inner life—it would be almost impossible to make the second part of his intellectual history intelligible—a phase that was unknown to the world and to me, but of which the mystical outcome was made evident to my eyes in the course of a few hours. Those who have not already dropped this volume, will, I hope, understand the events I still have to tell, forming as they do a sort of second existence lived by this creature—may I not say this creation?—in whom everything was to be so extraordinary, even his end.
When Louis returned to Blois, his uncle was eager to procure him some amusement; but the poor priest was regarded as a perfect leper in that godly-minded town. No one would have anything to say to a revolutionary who had taken the oaths. His society, therefore, consisted of a few individuals of what were then called liberal or patriotic, or constitutional opinions, on whom he would call for a rubber of whist or of boston.
At the first house where he was introduced by his uncle, Louis met a young lady, whose circumstances obliged her to remain in this circle, so contemned by those of the fashionable world, though her fortune was such as to make it probable that she might by and by marry into the highest aristocracy of the province. Mademoiselle Pauline de Villenoix was sole heiress to the wealth amassed by her grandfather, a Jew named Salomon, who, contrary to the customs of his nation, had, in his old age, married a Christian and a Catholic. He had only one son, who was brought up in his mother's faith. At his father's death young Salomon purchased what was known at that time as a savonnette a vilain (literally a cake of soap for a serf), a small estate called Villenoix, which he contrived to get registered with a baronial title, and took its name. He died unmarried, but he left a natural daughter, to whom he bequeathed the greater part of his fortune, including the lands of Villenoix. He appointed one of his uncles, Monsieur Joseph Salomon, to be the girl's guardian. The old Jew was so devoted to his ward that he seemed willing to make great sacrifices for the sake of marrying her well. But Mademoiselle de Villenoix's birth, and the cherished prejudice against Jews that prevails in the provinces, would not allow of her being received in the very exclusive circle which, rightly or wrongly, considers itself noble, notwithstanding her own large fortune and her guardian's.
Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could not secure a country squire, his niece should go to Paris and make choice of a husband among the peers of France, liberal or monarchical; as to happiness, that he believed he could secure her by the terms of the marriage contract.
Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her remarkable beauty and gifts of mind were surer guarantees of happiness than those offered by money. Her features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal, and seem to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeably blue sky, the glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of life there. She had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed with thick, curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on her brow. Her complexion was of the pure whiteness of the Levite's robe. She was habitually silent and thoughtful, but her movements and gestures betrayed a quiet grace, as her speech bore witness to a woman's sweet and loving nature. She had not, indeed, the rosy freshness, the fruit-like bloom which blush on a girl's cheek during her careless years. Darker shadows, with here and there a redder vein, took the place of color, symptomatic of an energetic temper and nervous irritability, such as many men do not like to meet with in a wife, while to others they are an indication of the most sensitive chastity and passion mingled with pride.
As soon as Louis saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix, he discerned the angel within. The richest powers of his soul, and his tendency to ecstatic reverie, every faculty within him was at once concentrated in boundless love, the first love of a young man, a passion which is strong indeed in all, but which in him was raised to incalculable power by the perennial ardor of his senses, the character of his ideas, and the manner in which he lived. This passion became a gulf, into which the hapless fellow threw everything; a gulf whither the mind dare not venture, since his, flexible and firm as it was, was lost there. There all was mysterious, for everything went on in that moral world, closed to most men, whose laws were revealed to him—perhaps to his sorrow.
When an accident threw me in the way of his uncle, the good man showed me into the room which Lambert had at that time lived in. I wanted to find some vestiges of his writings, if he should have left any. There among his papers, untouched by the old man from that fine instinct of grief that characterized the aged, I found a number of letters, too illegible ever to have been sent to Mademoiselle de Villenoix. My familiarity with Lambert's writing enabled me in time to decipher the hieroglyphics of this shorthand, the result of impatience and a frenzy of passion. Carried away by his feelings, he had written without being conscious of the irregularity of words too slow to express his thoughts. He must have been compelled to copy these chaotic attempts, for the lines often ran into each other; but he was also afraid perhaps of not having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and at first, at any rate, he had probably written his love-letters twice over.
It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memory, and the sort of fanaticism which comes of such a task, to enable me to divine and restore the meaning of the five letters that here follow. These documents, preserved by me with pious care, are the only material evidence of his overmastering passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix had no doubt destroyed the real letters that she received, eloquent witnesses to the delirium she inspired.
The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays by its style and by its length the many emendations, the heartfelt alarms, the innumerable terrors caused by a desire to please; the changes of expression and the hesitation between the whirl of ideas that beset a man as he indites his first love-letter—a letter he never will forget, each line the result of a reverie, each word the subject of long cogitation, while the most unbridled passion known to man feels the necessity of the most reserved utterance, and like a giant stooping to enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not to alarm a girl's soul.
No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater respect than I showed in reconstructing these mutilated documents of such joy and suffering as must always be sacred to those who have known similar joy and grief.
I
"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever should
read it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you; and to me,
the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps, ere now, have,
in speaking of themselves, misused the words I must employ to
depict the state of my soul; yet, I beseech you to believe in the
truth of my expressions; though weak, they are sincere. Perhaps I
ought not thus to proclaim my love. Indeed, my heart counseled me
to wait in silence till my passion should touch you, that I might
the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should
displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately
than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having
listened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with
alarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags useless
lamentations from the dying.
"It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of poverty, and
to overleap the barriers which prejudice erects between you and
me. I have had to smother many reflections to love you in spite of
your wealth; and as I write to you, am I not in danger of the
scorn which women often reserve for profession of love, which they
accept only as one more tribute of flattery? But we cannot help
rushing with all our might towards happiness, or being attracted
to the life of love as a plant is to the light; we must have been
very unhappy before we can conquer the torment, the anguish of
those secret deliberations when reason proves to us by a thousand
arguments how barren our yearning must be if it remains buried in
our hearts, and when hopes bid us dare everything.
"I was happy when I admired you in silence; I was so lost in the
contemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to see you left me
hardly anything further to imagine. And I should not now have
dared to address you if I had not heard that you were leaving.
What misery has that one word brought upon me! Indeed, it is my
despair that has shown me the extent of my attachment—it is
unbounded. Mademoiselle, you will never know—at least, I hope you
may never know—the anguish of dreading lest you should lose the
only happiness that has dawned on you on earth, the only thing
that has thrown a gleam of light in the darkness of misery. I
understood yesterday that my life was no more in myself, but in
you. There is but one woman in the world for me, as there is but
one thought in my soul. I dare not tell you to what a state I am
reduced by my love for you. I would have you only as a gift from
yourself; I must therefore avoid showing myself to you in all the
attractiveness of dejection—for is it not often more impressive
to a noble soul than that of good fortune? There are many things I
may not tell you. Indeed, I have too lofty a notion of love to
taint it with ideas that are alien to its nature. If my soul is
worthy of yours, and my life pure, your heart will have a
sympathetic insight, and you will understand me!
"It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who can make
him believe in happiness; but it is your prerogative to reject the
truest passion if it is not in harmony with the vague voices in
your heart—that I know. If my lot, as decided by you, must be
adverse to my hopes, mademoiselle, let me appeal to the delicacy
of your maiden soul and the ingenuous compassion of a woman to
burn my letter. On my knees I beseech you to forget all! Do not
mock at a feeling that is wholly respectful, and that is too
deeply graven on my heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart, but
do not rend it! Let the expression of my first love, a pure and
youthful love, be lost in your pure and youthful heart! Let it die
there as a prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God!
"I owe you much gratitude: I have spent delicious hours occupied
in watching you, and giving myself up to the faint dreams of my
life; do not crush these long but transient joys by some girlish
irony. Be satisfied not to answer me. I shall know how to
interpret your silence; you will see me no more. If I must be
condemned to know for ever what happiness means, and to be for
ever bereft of it; if, like a banished angel, I am to cherish the
sense of celestial joys while bound for ever to a world of sorrow
—well, I can keep the secret of my love as well as that of my
griefs.—And farewell!
"Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you, beseeching
Him to grant you a happy life; for even if I am driven from your
heart, into which I have crept by stealth, still I shall ever be
near you. Otherwise, of what value would the sacred words be of
this letter, my first and perhaps my last entreaty? If I should
ever cease to think of you, to love you whether in happiness or in
woe, should I not deserve my punishment?"
"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever should
read it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you; and to me,
the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps, ere now, have,
in speaking of themselves, misused the words I must employ to
depict the state of my soul; yet, I beseech you to believe in the
truth of my expressions; though weak, they are sincere. Perhaps I
ought not thus to proclaim my love. Indeed, my heart counseled me
to wait in silence till my passion should touch you, that I might
the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should
displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately
than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having
listened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with
alarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags useless
lamentations from the dying.
"It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of poverty, and
to overleap the barriers which prejudice erects between you and
me. I have had to smother many reflections to love you in spite of
your wealth; and as I write to you, am I not in danger of the
scorn which women often reserve for profession of love, which they
accept only as one more tribute of flattery? But we cannot help
rushing with all our might towards happiness, or being attracted
to the life of love as a plant is to the light; we must have been
very unhappy before we can conquer the torment, the anguish of
those secret deliberations when reason proves to us by a thousand
arguments how barren our yearning must be if it remains buried in
our hearts, and when hopes bid us dare everything.
"I was happy when I admired you in silence; I was so lost in the
contemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to see you left me
hardly anything further to imagine. And I should not now have
dared to address you if I had not heard that you were leaving.
What misery has that one word brought upon me! Indeed, it is my
despair that has shown me the extent of my attachment—it is
unbounded. Mademoiselle, you will never know—at least, I hope you
may never know—the anguish of dreading lest you should lose the
only happiness that has dawned on you on earth, the only thing
that has thrown a gleam of light in the darkness of misery. I
understood yesterday that my life was no more in myself, but in
you. There is but one woman in the world for me, as there is but
one thought in my soul. I dare not tell you to what a state I am
reduced by my love for you. I would have you only as a gift from
yourself; I must therefore avoid showing myself to you in all the
attractiveness of dejection—for is it not often more impressive
to a noble soul than that of good fortune? There are many things I
may not tell you. Indeed, I have too lofty a notion of love to
taint it with ideas that are alien to its nature. If my soul is
worthy of yours, and my life pure, your heart will have a
sympathetic insight, and you will understand me!
"It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who can make
him believe in happiness; but it is your prerogative to reject the
truest passion if it is not in harmony with the vague voices in
your heart—that I know. If my lot, as decided by you, must be
adverse to my hopes, mademoiselle, let me appeal to the delicacy
of your maiden soul and the ingenuous compassion of a woman to
burn my letter. On my knees I beseech you to forget all! Do not
mock at a feeling that is wholly respectful, and that is too
deeply graven on my heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart, but
do not rend it! Let the expression of my first love, a pure and
youthful love, be lost in your pure and youthful heart! Let it die
there as a prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God!
"I owe you much gratitude: I have spent delicious hours occupied
in watching you, and giving myself up to the faint dreams of my
life; do not crush these long but transient joys by some girlish
irony. Be satisfied not to answer me. I shall know how to
interpret your silence; you will see me no more. If I must be
condemned to know for ever what happiness means, and to be for
ever bereft of it; if, like a banished angel, I am to cherish the
sense of celestial joys while bound for ever to a world of sorrow
—well, I can keep the secret of my love as well as that of my
griefs.—And farewell!
"Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you, beseeching
Him to grant you a happy life; for even if I am driven from your
heart, into which I have crept by stealth, still I shall ever be
near you. Otherwise, of what value would the sacred words be of
this letter, my first and perhaps my last entreaty? If I should
ever cease to think of you, to love you whether in happiness or in
woe, should I not deserve my punishment?"
II
"You are not going away! And I am loved! I, a poor, insignificant
creature! My beloved Pauline, you do not yourself know the power
of the look I believe in, the look you gave me to tell me that you
had chosen me—you so young and lovely, with the world at your
feet!
"To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have to give
you a history of my life. If you had rejected me, all was over for
me. I have suffered too much. Yes, my love for you, my comforting
and stupendous love, was a last effort of yearning for the
happiness my soul strove to reach—a soul crushed by fruitless
labor, consumed by fears that make me doubt myself, eaten into by
despair which has often urged me to die. No one in the world can
conceive of the terrors my fateful imagination inflicts on me. It
often bears me up to the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth
again from prodigious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or
some rare and subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now
and then that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace the
universe in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I comprehend it
—or fancy that I do; then suddenly I awake—alone, sunk in
blackest night, helpless and weak; I forget the light I saw but
now, I find no succor; above all, there is no heart where I may
take refuge.
"This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence. The
nature of my character gives me over to the raptures of happiness
as defenceless as when the fearful light of reflection comes to
analyze and demolish them. Gifted as I am with the melancholy
faculty of seeing obstacles and success with equal clearness,
according to the mood of the moment, I am happy or miserable by
turns.
"Thus, when I first met you, I felt the presence of an angelic
nature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burning breast, I
heard in my soul the voice that never can be false, telling me
that here was happiness; but perceiving all the barriers that
divided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, and
these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of
happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction
which casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had
brought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I
could only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling with the
turmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced that
gnawing pang to which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and
betrayed affections have not inured me.
"Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should be
happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows into
joy. Now, I could wish that I had suffered more. My love is
suddenly full-grown. My soul was a wide territory that lacked the
blessing of sunshine, and your eyes have shed light on it. Beloved
providence! you will be all in all to me, orphan as I am, without
a relation but my uncle. You will be my whole family, as you are
my whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you not bestowed
on me every gladness man can desire in that chaste—lavish—timid
glance?
"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can
dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five
years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world
as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak
of them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which a
really noble spirit should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only
make their way by the assistance of a man bold enough to mount the
platform of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he
scorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,
crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it
hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed my
thoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I had even come to
despise knowledge, blaming it for yielding no real happiness.
"But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I now
covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I lay my
head on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the
whole world, just as I long to concentrate in my love every idea,
every power that is in me. The most splendid celebrity is a
possession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will,
make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid to
science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the
Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others
only crawl.
"Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will
can do anything—I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a
man to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can do
all. If you are the prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow.
To win such a look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap the
deepest abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievements
of chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the Arabian Nights.
I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and in
the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover his
liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormant
within me—patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, all
the strength of my soul. I live by you and—heavenly thought!—for
you. Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understand
everything, even the vanities of wealth.
"I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your feet;
I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on the
softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems hardly
worthy of you, for whom I would I could command the harmony and
the light that are given out by the harps of seraphs and the stars
of heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer you in words
treasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in which
you reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there no
treasures in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expressions will
perpetually vary with perennial happiness, under the constant
eagerness of my devotion to guess the wishes of your loving soul?
Has not one celestial glance given us assurance of always
understanding each other?
"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night—a prayer full
of you: 'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my days
as you now fill my heart?
"Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone!"
"You are not going away! And I am loved! I, a poor, insignificant
creature! My beloved Pauline, you do not yourself know the power
of the look I believe in, the look you gave me to tell me that you
had chosen me—you so young and lovely, with the world at your
feet!
"To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have to give
you a history of my life. If you had rejected me, all was over for
me. I have suffered too much. Yes, my love for you, my comforting
and stupendous love, was a last effort of yearning for the
happiness my soul strove to reach—a soul crushed by fruitless
labor, consumed by fears that make me doubt myself, eaten into by
despair which has often urged me to die. No one in the world can
conceive of the terrors my fateful imagination inflicts on me. It
often bears me up to the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth
again from prodigious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or
some rare and subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now
and then that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace the
universe in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I comprehend it
—or fancy that I do; then suddenly I awake—alone, sunk in
blackest night, helpless and weak; I forget the light I saw but
now, I find no succor; above all, there is no heart where I may
take refuge.
"This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence. The
nature of my character gives me over to the raptures of happiness
as defenceless as when the fearful light of reflection comes to
analyze and demolish them. Gifted as I am with the melancholy
faculty of seeing obstacles and success with equal clearness,
according to the mood of the moment, I am happy or miserable by
turns.
"Thus, when I first met you, I felt the presence of an angelic
nature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burning breast, I
heard in my soul the voice that never can be false, telling me
that here was happiness; but perceiving all the barriers that
divided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, and
these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of
happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction
which casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had
brought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I
could only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling with the
turmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced that
gnawing pang to which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and
betrayed affections have not inured me.
"Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should be
happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows into
joy. Now, I could wish that I had suffered more. My love is
suddenly full-grown. My soul was a wide territory that lacked the
blessing of sunshine, and your eyes have shed light on it. Beloved
providence! you will be all in all to me, orphan as I am, without
a relation but my uncle. You will be my whole family, as you are
my whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you not bestowed
on me every gladness man can desire in that chaste—lavish—timid
glance?
"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can
dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five
years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world
as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak
of them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which a
really noble spirit should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only
make their way by the assistance of a man bold enough to mount the
platform of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he
scorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,
crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it
hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed my
thoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I had even come to
despise knowledge, blaming it for yielding no real happiness.
"But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I now
covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I lay my
head on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the
whole world, just as I long to concentrate in my love every idea,
every power that is in me. The most splendid celebrity is a
possession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will,
make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid to
science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the
Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others
only crawl.
"Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will
can do anything—I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a
man to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can do
all. If you are the prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow.
To win such a look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap the
deepest abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievements
of chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the Arabian Nights.
I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and in
the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover his
liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormant
within me—patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, all
the strength of my soul. I live by you and—heavenly thought!—for
you. Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understand
everything, even the vanities of wealth.
"I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your feet;
I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on the
softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems hardly
worthy of you, for whom I would I could command the harmony and
the light that are given out by the harps of seraphs and the stars
of heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer you in words
treasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in which
you reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there no
treasures in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expressions will
perpetually vary with perennial happiness, under the constant
eagerness of my devotion to guess the wishes of your loving soul?
Has not one celestial glance given us assurance of always
understanding each other?
"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night—a prayer full
of you: 'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my days
as you now fill my heart?
"Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone!"
III
"Pauline! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you
yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me the
secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold me if you
will! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of having
offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made
so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two
souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial
crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble
sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly
careful not to fret each other by some heedless word.
"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in
me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a
woman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the
grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to appreciate
the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets of
yours.
"Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are
thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud
over life, and doubts on everything.
"I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken road,
gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to our hedge.
If you could imagine all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visions
passed before me under the gray sky, whose cold sheen added to my
dreary mood! I had dark presentiments! I was terrified lest I
should fail to make you happy.
"I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are moments
when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft of
all strength. Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of my body
is inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongue is
paralyzed, my imagination is extinct, desire is dead—nothing
survives but my mere human vitality. At such times, though you
were in all the splendor of your beauty, though you should lavish
on me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence
would blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody into
discordant sounds. At those times—as I believe—some
argumentative demon stands before me, showing me the void beneath
the most real possessions. This pitiless demon mows down every
flower, and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying: 'Well—and
then?' He mars the fairest work by showing me its skeleton, and
reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautiful
results.
"At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes possession
of me, when the divine light is darkened in my soul without my
knowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, I wish myself deaf
and dumb, I long for death to give me rest. These hours of doubt
and uneasiness are perhaps inevitable; at any rate, they teach me
not to be proud after the flights which have borne me to the skies
where I have gathered a full harvest of thoughts; for it is always
after some long excursion in the vast fields of the intellect, and
after the most luminous speculations, that I tumble, broken and
weary, into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife would
double my love for her—at any rate, she might. If she were
capricious, ailing, or depressed, she would need the comforting
overflow of ingenious affection, and I should not have a glance to
bestow on her. It is my shame, Pauline, to have to tell you that
at times I could weep with you, but that nothing could make me
smile.
"A woman can always conceal her troubles; for her child, or for
the man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. And
could not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of a
woman? Since yesterday I have doubted my own power. If I could
displease you once, if I failed once to understand you, I dread
lest I should often be carried out of our happy circle by my evil
demon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful moods, or
that my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of my
life—that I were doomed to remain such as I am?—Fatal doubts!
"Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me is
power. Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endure
every ill in life than endure the misery of knowing that you were
unhappy through me.
"But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me only because
I have had no gentle, white hands about me to drive him off. No
woman has ever shed on me the balm of her affection; and I know
not whether, if love should wave his pinions over my head in these
moments of exhaustion, new strength might not be given to my
spirit. This terrible melancholy is perhaps a result of my
isolation, one of the torments of a lonely soul which pays for its
hidden treasures with groans and unknown suffering. Those who
enjoy little shall suffer little; immense happiness entails
unutterable anguish!
"How terrible a doom! If it be so, must we not shudder for
ourselves, we who are superhumanly happy? If nature sells us
everything at its true value, into what pit are we not fated to
fall? Ah! the most fortunate lovers are those who die together in
the midst of their youth and love! How sad it all is! Does my soul
foresee evil in the future? I examine myself, wondering whether
there is anything in me that can cause you a moment's anxiety. I
love you too selfishly perhaps? I shall be laying on your beloved
head a burden heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love can
bring to your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable power
which I must obey—if I am compelled to curse when you pray, if
some dark thought coerces me when I would fain kneel at your feet
and play as a child, will you not be jealous of that wayward and
tricky spirit?
"You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not being
wholly yours; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres and the
palms of the world to enshrine you in one eternal thought, to see
a perfect life and an exquisite poem in our rapturous love; to
throw my soul into it, drown my powers, and wring from each hour
the joys it has to give!
"Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, the clouds of
despair will lift. Farewell. I leave you now to be more entirely
yours. My beloved soul, I look for a line, a word that may restore
my peace of mind. Let me know whether I really grieved my Pauline,
or whether some uncertain expression of her countenance misled me.
I could not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life of
happiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, a
honeyed word. To grieve the woman I love—Pauline, I should count
it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me off with some
magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."
"Pauline! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you
yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me the
secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold me if you
will! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of having
offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made
so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two
souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial
crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble
sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly
careful not to fret each other by some heedless word.
"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in
me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a
woman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the
grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to appreciate
the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets of
yours.
"Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are
thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud
over life, and doubts on everything.
"I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken road,
gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to our hedge.
If you could imagine all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visions
passed before me under the gray sky, whose cold sheen added to my
dreary mood! I had dark presentiments! I was terrified lest I
should fail to make you happy.
"I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are moments
when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft of
all strength. Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of my body
is inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongue is
paralyzed, my imagination is extinct, desire is dead—nothing
survives but my mere human vitality. At such times, though you
were in all the splendor of your beauty, though you should lavish
on me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence
would blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody into
discordant sounds. At those times—as I believe—some
argumentative demon stands before me, showing me the void beneath
the most real possessions. This pitiless demon mows down every
flower, and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying: 'Well—and
then?' He mars the fairest work by showing me its skeleton, and
reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautiful
results.
"At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes possession
of me, when the divine light is darkened in my soul without my
knowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, I wish myself deaf
and dumb, I long for death to give me rest. These hours of doubt
and uneasiness are perhaps inevitable; at any rate, they teach me
not to be proud after the flights which have borne me to the skies
where I have gathered a full harvest of thoughts; for it is always
after some long excursion in the vast fields of the intellect, and
after the most luminous speculations, that I tumble, broken and
weary, into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife would
double my love for her—at any rate, she might. If she were
capricious, ailing, or depressed, she would need the comforting
overflow of ingenious affection, and I should not have a glance to
bestow on her. It is my shame, Pauline, to have to tell you that
at times I could weep with you, but that nothing could make me
smile.
"A woman can always conceal her troubles; for her child, or for
the man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. And
could not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of a
woman? Since yesterday I have doubted my own power. If I could
displease you once, if I failed once to understand you, I dread
lest I should often be carried out of our happy circle by my evil
demon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful moods, or
that my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of my
life—that I were doomed to remain such as I am?—Fatal doubts!
"Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me is
power. Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endure
every ill in life than endure the misery of knowing that you were
unhappy through me.
"But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me only because
I have had no gentle, white hands about me to drive him off. No
woman has ever shed on me the balm of her affection; and I know
not whether, if love should wave his pinions over my head in these
moments of exhaustion, new strength might not be given to my
spirit. This terrible melancholy is perhaps a result of my
isolation, one of the torments of a lonely soul which pays for its
hidden treasures with groans and unknown suffering. Those who
enjoy little shall suffer little; immense happiness entails
unutterable anguish!
"How terrible a doom! If it be so, must we not shudder for
ourselves, we who are superhumanly happy? If nature sells us
everything at its true value, into what pit are we not fated to
fall? Ah! the most fortunate lovers are those who die together in
the midst of their youth and love! How sad it all is! Does my soul
foresee evil in the future? I examine myself, wondering whether
there is anything in me that can cause you a moment's anxiety. I
love you too selfishly perhaps? I shall be laying on your beloved
head a burden heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love can
bring to your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable power
which I must obey—if I am compelled to curse when you pray, if
some dark thought coerces me when I would fain kneel at your feet
and play as a child, will you not be jealous of that wayward and
tricky spirit?
"You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not being
wholly yours; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres and the
palms of the world to enshrine you in one eternal thought, to see
a perfect life and an exquisite poem in our rapturous love; to
throw my soul into it, drown my powers, and wring from each hour
the joys it has to give!
"Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, the clouds of
despair will lift. Farewell. I leave you now to be more entirely
yours. My beloved soul, I look for a line, a word that may restore
my peace of mind. Let me know whether I really grieved my Pauline,
or whether some uncertain expression of her countenance misled me.
I could not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life of
happiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, a
honeyed word. To grieve the woman I love—Pauline, I should count
it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me off with some
magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."