Part 2 (1/2)
In the riparian Navarrese, as in the Catalans and the Genovese, one already notes the African; in the Gaul of central France, as well as in the Austrian, there is a suggestion of the Chinese.
Clutching the Pyrenees and grafted upon the Alps, I am conscious of being an Arch-European.
DIONYSIAN OR APOLLONIAN?
Formerly, when I believed that I was both humble and a wanderer, I was convinced that I was a Dionysian. I was impelled toward turbulence, the dynamic, the theatric. Naturally, I was an anarchist. Am I today? I believe I still am. In those days I used to enthuse about the future, and I hated the past.
Little by little, this turbulence has calmed down--perhaps it was never very great. Little by little I have come to realize that if following Dionysus induces the will to bound and leap, devotion to Apollo has a tendency to throw the mind back until it rests upon the harmony of eternal form. There is great attraction in both G.o.ds.
EPICURI DE GREGE PORc.u.m
I am also a swine of the herd of Epicurus; I, too, wax eloquent over this ancient philosopher, who conversed with his pupils in his garden.
The very epithet of Horace, upon detaching himself from the Epicureans, ”_Epicuri de grege porc.u.m_,” is full of charm.
All n.o.ble minds have hymned Epicurus. ”Hail Epicurus, thou honour of Greece!” Lucretius exclaims in the third book of his poem.
”I have sought to avenge Epicurus, that truly holy philosopher, that divine genius,” Lucian tells us in his _Alexander, or the False Prophet_. Lange, in his _History of Materialism_, sets down Epicurus as a disciple and imitator of Democritus.
I am not a man of sufficient cla.s.sical culture to be able to form an authoritative opinion of the merits of Epicurus as a philosopher. All my knowledge of him, as well as of the other ancient philosophers, is derived from the book of Diogenes Laertius.
Concerning Epicurus, I have read Bayle's magnificent article in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_, and Ga.s.sendi's work, _De Vita et Moribus Epicuri_. With this equipment, I have become one of the disciples of the master.
Scholars may say that I have no right to enrol myself as one of the disciples of Epicurus, but when I think of myself, spontaneously there comes to my mind the grotesque epithet which Horace applied to the Epicureans in his _Epistles_, a characterization which for my part I accept and regard as an honour: ”Swine of the herd of Epicurus, _Epicuri de grege porc.u.m_.”
EVIL AND ROUSSEAU'S CHINAMAN
I do not believe in utter human depravity, nor have I any faith in great virtue, nor in the notion that the affairs of life may be removed beyond good and evil. We shall outgrow, we have already outgrown, the conception of sin, but we shall never pa.s.s beyond the idea of good and evil; that would be equivalent to skipping the cardinal points in geography. Nietzsche, an eminent poet and an extraordinary psychologist, convinced himself that we should be able to leap over good and evil with the help of a springboard of his manufacture.
Not with this springboard, nor with any other, shall we escape from the polar North and South of the moral life.
Nietzsche, a product of the fiercest pessimism, was at heart a good man, being in this respect the direct opposite of Rousseau, who, despite the fact that he is forever talking about virtue, about sensibility, the heart, and the sublimity of the soul, was in reality a low, sordid creature.
The philanthropist of Geneva shows the cloven hoof now and then. He asks: ”If all that it were necessary for us to do in order to inherit the riches of a man whom we had never seen, of whom we had never even heard, and who lived in the furthermost confines of China, were to press a b.u.t.ton and cause his death, what man living would not press that b.u.t.ton?”
Rousseau is convinced that we should all press the b.u.t.ton, and he is mistaken, because the majority of men who are civilized would do nothing of the kind. This, to my mind, is not to say that men are good; it is merely to say that Rousseau, in his enthusiasm for humanity, as well as in his aversion to it, is wide of the mark. The evil in man is not evil of this active sort, so theatrical, so self-interested; it is a pa.s.sive, torpid evil which lies latent in the depths of the human animal, it is an evil which can scarcely be called evil.
THE ROOT OF DISINTERESTED EVIL