Part 24 (2/2)
When a moral problem is limited to the _effects_ of preventable causes, it is ine for a moment a populous quarter, where pauperisht for a piece of bread; where dirt, drinking-shops and civic neglect degrade the inhabitants; where all, ive way readily to vice Our sole impression of such people at the moment is: ”What wicked people!” On the other hand, let us take the modern quarter of an industrious city, where the houses of the people are hygienic, where the workpeople receive a fair remuneration for their labor, where popular theaters, conducted with a true sense of art, have taken the place of public-houses, and let us enter one of the restaurants where workpeople are enjoying their food in a quiet, civilized fashi+on; we should be inclined to say: ”What good people!”
But have they really becoood? Those who aood people But the individuals who have benefited by their exertions ”live better”; they are not, strictly speaking, ”more meritorious” in the ine a society in which the economic problem had been solved, to beholdbeen born in a different age It is obvious that the moral question is a very different one; it is a question of life, a question of ”nature,” and one which cannot be solved by external eventualities Men may be more or less fortunate, they s, but they will always be oes down deeper than fortune or civilization
It is very easy to be convinced that the so-called ”naughtiness” of children is the expression of a ”struggle for spiritual existence”; they want to make the men within them live, and we try to hinder theht for their spiritual bread as the poor fight forvictirade the to the fascination of alcohol; and in this struggle and this degradation children have revealed thelected and destitute None has ever demonstrated more clearly than they that ”man does not live by bread alone,” and that the ”question of bread” is not the real ”question of les, all the claiard to bodily needs are repeated here with a clarity in connection with spiritual needs Children want to grow, to perfect theence, to develop their internal energies, to form their characters and to these ends they need to be liberated from slavery, and to conquer ”the h to nourish their bodies: they are hungry for intellectual food; the clothes which protect their lih for children: they derace to protect and adorn the spirit Why have we adults stifled these wants till we have almost come to believe that the economic question is the true solution of the probleined that, even after such a solution, strife, anger, despair, and degradation her desires left unsatisfied? Such strife, anger, despair and degradation we encounter continually in the children of to-day, who are nevertheless well fed, well clothed and armed, in accordance with the standards of perfected physical hygiene
To respond to the intellectual needs of man in such a manner as to satisfy them is to make an important contribution to morality Indeed our children, when they have been able to occupy theent work, and have also been free to respond to their internal wants, to occupy the time with chosen stimuli, to perform abstract operations when they were sufficiently mature, to concentrate their minds in meditation, have shown that order and serenity have been evolved within therace of movement, the capacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, sensibility to music, and finally, a up like a jet of water from an internal fount
All this has been a work of ”liberation” We have not ht them to ”overcome their caprices” and to sit quietly at work; we have not inculcated cal the how necessary order is to man; we have not lectured them on mutual courtesy, to instil the respect due to the work of others, and the patience hich they should wait in order not to infringe the rights of others There has been none of all this; we have merely set the child free, and helped hiht _us_ ”how” the child lives, and what other needs he has besides his material wants
Thereupon an activity forether with the virtues of industry, perseverance and patience, manifested themselves amidst crises of joy, in an atmosphere of habitual serenity These children had entered upon the paths of peace An obstacle hitherto opposed to nature had been re food and rerown calher pleasures to base and degrading indulgence, so the child, his internal needs satisfied, has entered the sphere of serenity and has shown his tendency to ascend
All this, however, has not touched the roots of the ed it of all the dross that encumbered it
The more fully a man's wants are satisfied, the happier he is; but he is not already ”full of ifted with a lofty ht really to be Rather have we deprived oodness” has disappeared as well as ”wickedness” at the advent of social reforoodness were for were forms of misfortune, we left man absolutely naked, stripped bare by truth He must then take up his real life at its roots and ”acquire in to be born anewfroienically” living man
If the whole structure of our educative method starts from an act of concentrated attention to a sensory stimulus, and builds itself up on the education of the senses, li itself to this, it would evidently not take the whole man into consideration For if man does not live by material bread alone, neither does he live solely by intellectual bread
The stimuli of the environment are not only the objects, but also the persons, hom our relations are not merely sensory In fact, we are not content to admire in them that beauty to which the Greeks were so sensitive, or to listen to their speech or their song The true relations between h they are initiated by means of the senses, are established in sympathy
The ”reat extent the sense of sympathy with our fellows, the comprehension of their sorrows, the sentiment of justice: the lack of these sentiments convulses nor codes and their applications to ht fail us a thousand tiht overcome us; criminals, in fact, even when they are most astute and wary students of codes, often violate thenorant of the laws, never transgress theuides them”
Positive science includes in the ter complex which is, at the saion; andit thus, it does not clearly define in what ”moral sense” consists We talk of it intuitively; each one has within hi that ”responds” to the appellation; and by this internal response he must understand and decide in what this ”ion is simple and precise: it calls this internal sense which lies at the root of life, Love Social laws do not enter into this any more than does the entire universe Love is the contact between the soul and God; and when this exists, all the rest is vanity Good springs therefrom naturally, as sunbeaiven in charge of this wellspring of love, and it is love which maintains it, as the contribution of the creature to the provident forces of nature
Those biological studies which seek to probe the secrets of nature have also recognized love as the key of life Scientists have at last perceived, after much research, this most evident fact: that it is love which preserves the anile for existence” In fact, the struggle for existence tends to destroy; and as regards survival, this is not the exclusive privilege of the ”fittest,” as was at first supposed But existence is indeed bound up with love Indeed, the individuals who struggle and conquer are adults; but who is it that protects the new-born creature and infant life in process of for is the natural protection of his species, he does not possess it; if it is strength of muscle, he is weak; if it is tusks, he is without theility, he cannot yet move; if it is fecundity, he is not yet mature Therefore, all species should have beco but that he once eak; and there is no infancy which is not more feeble than any adult life It is love which protects all this weakness, and explains ”survival” Maternal love, indeed, is studied to-day with the deepest attention by our scientists as a natural phenole for existence presented to us a uniform picture of destruction, the phenomena of maternal love are to-day revealed to us in the richest andforms, which almost represent the occult and sentimental aspect of the marvelous varieties of forms in nature It is seen at last to be one of the ”fundanized by all students
Even insects, which Fabre has described with such a wealth of detail, small and remote as they are from ourselves, exhibit wonderful phenomena of maternal love One of the first articles published by a naturalist on these phenoy of a Spider) ht serve as theof threads, which she generally attaches to the backs of leaves, and in it she deposits and preserves her eggs; she gets into it herself together with the eggs, to protect the treasure of the species If the bag should be broken at any point, the spider promptly repairs it By way of experi, and kept at a distance for twenty days What is a spider? A few cubic millimetres of a dark, flabby substance without brain or heart, whose life is so short that twenty days constitute a very long interval for it; but this sitation never abated; finally, when she was liberated at the end of the twenty days, she fled to the bag, hid herself in it, and repaired the walls Where was all this love and memory concentrated? This mother-spider was then removed from the nest, and another spider was introduced, which at once adopted the offspring, acted the mother, defended the nest froed There must therefore be a maternal instinct in the species, independent of actual , not only did the foster-ave up her place By what pheno feel thewas the end of the experi together with theirto see ould happen; the little spiders fled in every direction, but the ments of the nest, and died, al Maternal love, therefore, does not require coans; it needs neither brain, heart, nor senses, and seems almost to exist without matter; it is the force which life assumes to protect and preserve itself, a force which seems to exist before and to accompany creation, like that wisdoinning of his way, before his works of old When there were no depths, I was brought forth Then I was by hi always before hi before biologists perceived that love is the powerful force which protects the species, and explains its survival, religion had pointed to love as the force which preserves life In order to live, it is not enough to be created; the creature must also be loved This is the law of nature ”He who loveth notabideth in death” When Moses gave the decalogue which was to guide the Hebrews to salvation, he preceded it by the law: ”Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself” When the Pharisees ca Him to declare the Law, He answered: ”Do you not know?
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; as if to say: the law is evident and unique, it is the law of life, and for this reasonof the world But to St
Peter, as to be the head of the new religion, love the transition from the old to the new order was more fully explained: ”Love,” said Christ, ”even as I have loved you,” that is to say, not as you are capable of loving, but as I aulf between the manner in which men are able to love themselves and that in which Christ can loveto their own perdition; they are capable of confounding good with evil, life with death, food with poison Little confidence can therefore be felt in the injunction: ”Love thy neighbor as thyself” And it was in truth a new coave, when He said: ”Love even as I have loved you”
Moses, indeed, had been obliged to suppleue of practical injunctions: ”Honor thy father and mother, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet” Christ, on the other hand taught that it will be enough if we do not deer be any need of the support of rules We must let the measure overflow; and behold! this in itself opens to man the door of salvation ”If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love theood to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners to receive as ood, and lend, hoping for nothing again, and ye shall be the children of the Highest” (St Luke vi, 32-35)
Set yourselves free fro needful: to be alive, to feel; this was the revelation made by Christ when, like Moses, He went up into thethe crowd indeed to follow Hi all the secrets of truth: Blessed are those who feel, even if they suffer, for to suffer is to feel, to live Blessed are those eep, blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, blessed are the persecuted, blessed are those whose hearts are pure and free from darkness For he who feels shall be satisfied; but he who cannot feel is lost; woe to those who lie down in coh--they have lost their ”sensibility” And then all is vanity
What is the use of knowing all thethem, if the heart be dead? It is as if we should whiten the tomb of a corpse The moral, self-satisfied man, without a heart, is a tomb