Part 4 (1/2)
The former has always been a commonplace among philosophers.
Life is absurd, life is difficult of direction, life is a disease, the better part of the philosophers have told us.
When man turned his animosity against society, it became the fas.h.i.+on to exalt life. Life is good; man, naturally, is magnanimous, it was said.
Society has made him bad.
I am convinced that life is neither good nor bad; it is like Nature, necessary. And society is neither good nor bad. It is bad for the man who is endowed with a sensibility which is excessive for his age; it is good for a man who finds himself in harmony with his surroundings.
A negro will walk naked through a forest in which every drop of water is impregnated with millions of paludal germs, which teems with insects, the bites of which produce malignant abcesses, and where the temperature reaches fifty degrees Centigrade in the shade.
A European, accustomed to the sheltered life of the city, when brought face to face with such a tropical climate, without means of protection, would die.
Man needs to be endowed with a sensibility which is proper to his epoch and his environment; if he has less, his life will be merely that of a child; if he has just the right measure, it will be the life of an adult; if he has more, he will be an invalid.
ON DEVOURING ONE'S OWN G.o.d
It is said that the philosopher Averroes was wont to remark: ”What a sect these Christians are, who devour their own G.o.d!”
It would seem that this divine alimentation ought to make men themselves divine. But it does not; our theophagists are human--they are only too human, as Nietzsche would have it.
There can be no doubt but that the Southern European races are the most vivacious, the most energetic, as well as the toughest in the world.
They have produced all the great conquerors. Christianity, when it found it necessary to overcome them, innoculated them with its Semitic virus, but this virus has not only failed to make them weaker, but, on the contrary, it has made them stronger. They appropriated what suited them in the Asiatic mentality, and proceeded to make a weapon of their religion. These cruel Levantine races, thanks only to Teutonic penetration, are at last submitting to a softening process, and they will become completely softened upon the establishment in Europe of the domination of the Slav.
Meanwhile they maintain their sway in their own countries.
”They are quite inoffensive,” we are told.
Nonsense! They would burn Giordano Bruno as willingly now as they did in the old days.
There is a great deal of fire remaining in the hearts of our theophagists.
ANARCHISM
In an article appearing in _Hermes_, a magazine published in Bilbao, Salaverria a.s.sumes that I have been cured of my anarchism, and that I persist in a negative and anarchistic att.i.tude in order to retain my literary clientele; which is not the fact. In the first place, I can scarcely be said to have a clientele; in the second place, a small following of conservatives is much more lucrative than a large one of anarchists. It is true that I am withdrawing myself from the festivals of Pan and the cult of Dionysus, but I am not subst.i.tuting for them, either outwardly or inwardly, the wors.h.i.+p of Yahveh or of Moloch. I have no liking for Semitic traditions--none and none whatever! I am not able, like Salaverria, to admire the rich simply because they are rich, nor people in high stations because they happen to occupy them.
Salaverria a.s.sumes that I have a secret admiration for grand society, generals, magistrates, wealthy gentlemen from America, and Argentines who shout out: ”How perfectly splendid!” I have the same affection for these things that I have for the cows which clutter up the road in front of my house. I would not be Fouquier-Tinville to the former nor butcher to the latter; but my affection then has reached its limit. Even when I find something worthy of admiration, my inclination is toward the small.
I prefer the Boboli Gardens to those of Versailles, and Venetian or Florentine history to that of India.
Great states, great captains, great kings, great G.o.ds, leave me cold.
They are all for peoples who dwell on vast plains which are crossed by mighty rivers, for the Egyptians, for the Chinese, for the Hindus, for the Germans, for the French.