Part 25 (2/2)
which teaches us froood confers serenity, which is order; enthusiasuish which is at times unbearable: remorse, which is not only darkness and disorder, but fever, a malady of the soul It is certain that the laws of society, public opinion, , and threats of peril would all be powerless to produce these various sensations Often serenity is to be found a the unfortunate, whereas the remorse of Lady Macbeth, who saw the spot of blood upon her hand, gnawed at the heart of one who had acquired a kingdo that there should be an internal sensation which warns us of perils, and causes us to recognize the circumstances favorable to life If science in these days de even material life correspond to the moral ”virtues,” we may conclude that we shall be able to divine what is necessary to life by ical sciences deous fact? The biometer applied to e e e measurements have been found, by ical studies of e man would be a ical predisposition to disease of the organs When the figure of a e biometrical proportions, it was found to correspond in a remarkable manner to the proportions of Greek statues This fact helped to give a new interpretation to ”aesthetic senti that the eye of the Greek artist was able to extract the average an, and to construct a marvelous and exact whole therewith The ”enjoyment” of the artist was his enjoyment of the ”beautiful”; but he felt even more profoundly that which contained the triuuished it from the errors of nature, which predispose to illness The triuive an intiht, will then be perceived as discords Aesthetic education is, in short, akin to the e; the more it is possible to approach to the true et to this, the more possible does it become to have an absolute reat artist is thus able to recognize the beautiful in a detail even in the midst of other discordant details; and thean absolute sense of the beautiful, the more readily will he perceive any disproportion of for of the same sort may happen in the conscience in relation to the distinction between good and evil; the ood stands for real utility in life far hly said to represent danger Have not animals, perhaps, an acute instinct of self-preservation, which dictates infinite details of conduct to them, both for the s, horses, and cats, and generally speaking, all domestic animals, do not await the imminent earthquake quietly and unconsciously, as does itated When the ice is about to crack, the Esquihs detach the in; whileinstinct with stupefaction Man has not by nature these intense instincts; it is by ence and the sensibility of his conscience to good and evil that he constructs his defenses and recognizes his perils And if this intelligence of his, which is actually capable of transforht above aniht he raise hi his moral consciousness!
But on the contrary,himself seriously whether animals are not better than he When , pure as a dove, strong as a lion”
Indeed, animals have always that instinct which is admirable, for it confers on them a mysterious power; but if man lacks sensibility of conscience he is inferior to the ani can then save him from excesses; he may rush upon his own ruin, upon havoc and destruction in a ht fill animals with stupefaction and terror; and if it were in their power they ht become equal to themselves Men without conscience are like animals without the instinct of self-preservation;on destruction
What shall it profit man to discover by means of science the law of physical self-preservation in its most minute details, if he has no care for that which corresponds in man to the ”instinct” of his own salvation? If an individual has a perfect knowledge of hygienic feeding, of the h himself in order to follow the course of his own health, of bathing and of e, but should lose the instinct of humanity and kill a fellow-creature, or take his own life, ould be the use of all his care? And if he feels nothinghim into melancholy, what does his well-nourished and ashed body avail him?
Good is life; evil is death; the real distinction is as clear as the words
Our ence, capable of perfection, of elevation; this is one of the most fundamental of its differences from the instincts of animals
The sensibility of the conscience nize and at last enjoy ”good,” up to the very limits of the absolute, and also until it becohtest deviations towards evil He who feels thus is ”saved”; he who feels less ilant, and do his utmost to preserve and develop that uishi+ng good from evil It is one of the most important acts of life to exa as our source of illue of h love that this sensibility can be perfected
He whose sense has not been educated cannot judge himself A doctor, for example, may be perfectly informed as to the symptoms of a disease, and may know exactly how cardiac sounds and the resistance of the pulse are affected in diseases of the heart; but if his ear cannot perceive the sounds, if his hand cannot appreciate the tactile sensations which give the pulse, of what use is his science to hi diseases is derived froe in relation to the sick nosis of our own conscience; if we are blind and deaf, innumerable symptoms will pass unobserved, and we shall not knohat to found our judgs will oppress us fro” which spurs us on towards perfection
There have been persons with an extraordinary power of recognizing good and evil, just as the Greek artists showed extraordinary powers of recognizing the noruidance of the aesthetic sense Saint Teresa tells us that when soood approached her, she suffered as if she were inhaling a bad s at all, in the material sense; but that she actually suffered, notwas a real spiritual distress which she could not tolerate
More interesting still is the following story which refers to the early Fathers of the Church, who lived in the desert ”We were seated at the feet of our Bishop,” says one of thehis holy and salutary teaching Suddenly there appeared on the scene the leading 'mime,' the most beautiful of the public dancers of Antioch, covered with jewels; her bare legs were alold; her head and shoulders were uncovered A throng of persons acco her with their eyes An exquisite perfume which exhaled from her person scented the air we breathed When she had passed, our Father, who had looked steadfastly at her, said to us: 'Were you not fascinated by so much beauty?' We were all silent 'I,' continued the Bishop, 'experienced great pleasure in looking at her, for God has appointed that soe us I see her,' he added, 'as a soiled and blackened dove; but this dove shall be washed and shall fly heavenwards, white as snow' As a fact, this woia,' she said, 'or such is the naave me, but the people of Antioch call me The Pearl, because of the quantities of jehich oods to the poor, put on a hair shi+rt, and took up her abode in a cell on Monte Oliveto, which she never left until her death” (Montalembert, _Les Moines d'Occident_, vol 1, p 86)
=Our insensibility=--How remote are we from that delicate sensibility which responds to evil by suffering and to the good perceived in others as it wereof pleasure! In our society it is possible for us to live for a long time with a criminal, to esteem him, press his hand, etc, until he is at last exposed by the scandalous discovery of his ht it? He always seemed an excellent person”
And yet it is ins, no perversities of feeling, no heartlessness which should have revealed hiht all to become wonderful aesthetes like the Greek sculptors, or as sensitive as the saints; but if we ad to pass by the beauties of art without perceiving them; that it is the mark of defective civilization to confound horrible coarseness and uish the strident noise of the tra crash of ill-tuned instruner; that each of us would blush for such insensibility, and would conceal it--how is it we do not perceive that such obtuseness is habitual to us invirtuous persons and cri How is it that so often in the case of judicial errors, the voice of the innocent did not resound in our ears, although his trial was a public one, and we allowed hioodness should be so obscure a thing that we confound it with prosperity? How is it that those rich ospel says ”Woe unto you, richthe morals” of the poor, without any exaing to theood and the poor essentially bad
If such darkness as this reigned in the intellectual field, we should be unable to conceive the form of madness which would present itself to our eyes There are confusions in the ine in any other domain of life If sohted than those of to-day, hear that the Christmas feast was kept on the battlefields of the European war, they will understand the origins of the war itself In such a situation, David (to whom indeed it would have been inconceivable) would have accepted the taunt of his enemies as well deserved, when they asked him: ”Where is now thy God?” ”We have lost God” would have been a fitting lamentation But to celebrate His festival indifferently under such conditions is to be unconscious of having lost Hi up on death begin? What a terrible episode of hter, upon which the tree of peace was planted in honor of the Savior!
Far indeed are we from the delicate sensibility to evil of Santa Teresa, or the keenness of spiritual vision which enabled the man of God to see the white dove beneath the soiled feathers of the sinful woman The difference is not as that between the taste of a peasant and that of an artist, but as that between a corpse and a living man
It is evident that we have suffered death, albeit we are unconscious of having died
Here, then, and not in hygiene,ile than our physical life; and the peril of darkness hangs over us This is the secret of ht that leads him on towards a better world, he falls into an abyss far below all created animals
He who loves, therefore, will bestow all his care on these wellsprings of life; how frail are the lungs of a new-born infant, how easily can an unnatural mother deprive him of air and so suffocate him! Yet what is this easily accomplished act, which nevertheless destroys a life, in comparison with the infinitely easier and more deadly act by which we may procure the death of the soul?
The death of the soul, like that of the body, uished from a state of insensibility; in vain do we apply a red-hot iron to a corpse; there is no response
He who is alive, however, is not only capable of reacting to a stimulus very much less intense than a red-hot iron; he who lives and feels h that souls should ”feel” How, then, could they live quietly amidst evil? If under the s of our house people were piling up refuse until we felt that the air was being vitiated, could we bear this without protesting, and insisting on the re us to suffer? If, moreover, we had a child, we should clamor still more loudly, and should even set to work to clear away the nuisance with our own hands, in our solicitude for his health But if the bodies of er be conscious of the pestilential air
It is characteristic of ”life” to purge the environment and the soul of substances injurious to health Christ was called ”the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world,” not the Master who preaches, but He who purifies And this is the s fro the world, of re the spirit from the darkness of death
The merits of which every man feels he owes an account to his conscience are not such things as having enjoyed music or made a discovery; he must be able to say what he has done to save and maintain life