Part 5 (1/2)
Perrotin leaned over and took Clerambault's hand. ”My poor friend,”
said he, ”you make too much of this. No doubt you are right to acknowledge the errors of judgment into which you have been drawn by public opinion, and I may confess to you now that I was sorry to see it; but you are wrong to ascribe to yourself and other thinkers so much responsibility for the events of today. One man speaks, another acts; but the speakers do not move the others to action; they are all drifting with the tide. This unfortunate European thought is a bit of drift-wood like the rest, it does not make the current, it is carried along by it.”
”It persuades people to yield to it,” said Clerambault, ”instead of helping the swimmers, and bidding them struggle against it; it says: Let yourself go.... No, my friend, do not try to diminish its responsibility, it is the greatest of all. Our thought had the best place from which to see; its business was to keep watch, and if it saw nothing, it was through lack of good-will, for it cannot lay the blame on its eyes, which are clear enough. You know it and so do I, now that I have come to my senses. The same intelligence which darkened my eyes, has now torn away the bandage; how can it be, at the same time, a power for truth and for falsehood?”
Perrotin shook his head.
”Yes, intelligence is so great and so high that she cannot put herself at the service of any other forces without derogation; for if she is no longer mistress and free, she is degraded. It is a case of Roman master debasing the Greek, his superior, and making him his purveyor--_Graeculus_, sophist, _Laeno_.... To the vulgar the intelligence is a sort of maid-of-all-work, and in this position she displays the sly, dishonest cleverness of her kind. Sometimes she is employed by hatred, pride, or self-interest, and then she flatters these little devils, dressing them up as Idealism, Love, Faith, Liberty, and social generosity; for when a man does not love his neighbour, he says he loves G.o.d, his Country, or even Humanity.
Sometimes the poor master is himself a slave to the State. Under threat of punishment, the social machine forces him to acts which are repugnant, but the complaisant intelligence persuades him that these are fine and glorious, and performed by him of his own free will. In either case the intelligence knows what she is about, and is always at our disposition if we really want her to tell us the truth; but we take good care to avoid it, and never to be left alone with her.
We manage so as to meet her only in public when we can put leading questions as we please.... When all is said, the earth goes round none the less, _e pur se muove_;--the laws of the world are obeyed, and the free mind beholds them. All the rest is vanity; the pa.s.sions, faith, sincere or insincere, are only the painted face of that necessity which rules the world, without caring for our idols: family, race, country, religion, society, progress.... Progress indeed! The great illusion! Humanity is like water that must find its level, and when the cistern brims over a valve opens and it is empty again.... A catastrophic rhythm, the heights of civilisation, and then downfall.
We rise, and are cast down ...”
Thus Perrotin calmly unveiled his Thought. She was not much accustomed to going naked; but she forgot that she had a witness, and undressed as if she were alone. She was extremely bold, as is often the thought of a man of letters not obliged to suit the action to the word, but who much prefers, on the contrary, not to do so. The alarmed Clerambault listened with his mouth open; certain words revolted him, others pierced him to the heart; his head swam, but he overcame his weakness, for he was determined to lose nothing of these profundities.
He pressed Perrotin with questions: and he, on his part, flattered and smiling, complaisantly unrolled his pyrrhonian visions, as peaceable as they were destructive.
The vapours of the pit were rising all about them; and Clerambault was admiring the ease of this free spirit perched on the edge of the abyss and enjoying it, when the door opened, and the servant came in with a card which he gave to Perrotin.
At once the terrible phantoms of the brain vanished; a trap-door shut out the emptiness, and an official drawing-room rug covered it.
Perrotin roused himself and said eagerly: ”Certainly, show him in at once.” Turning to Clerambault he added:
”Pardon me, my dear friend, it is the Honourable Under-Secretary of State for Public Instruction.”
He was already on his feet and went to meet his visitor, a stage-lover looking fellow, with the blue clean-shaven chin of a priest or a Yankee, who held his head very high, and wore in the grey cut-a-way which clothed his well-rounded figure, the rosette which is displayed alike by our heroes and our lackeys. The old gentleman presented Clerambault to him with cheerful alacrity: ”Mr. Agenor Clerambault--Mr. Hyacinth Moncheri,” and asked the Honourable Under-Secretary of State to what he owed the honour of his visit.
The Honourable Under-Secretary, not in the least surprised by the obsequious welcome of the old scholar, settled himself in his armchair with the lofty air of familiarity suitable to the superior position he held over the two representatives of French letters. He represented the State.
Speaking haughtily through his nose, and braying like a dromedary, he extended to Perrotin an invitation from the Minister to preside over a solemn contest of embattled intellectuals from ten nations, in the great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne--”an imprecatory meeting,” he called it. Perrotin promptly accepted, and professed himself overcome by the honour. His servile tone before this licensed government ignoramus made a striking contrast with his bold statements a few moments before, and Clerambault, somewhat taken aback, thought of the _Graeculus_.
Mr. ”Cheri” walked out with his head in the air, like an a.s.s in a sacred procession, accompanied by Perrotin to the very threshold, and when the friends were once more alone, Clerambault would have liked to resume the conversation, but he could not conceal that he was a little chilled by what had pa.s.sed. He asked Perrotin if he meant to state in public the opinions he had just professed, and Perrotin refused, naturally, laughing at his friend's simplicity. What is more, he cautioned him affectionately against proclaiming such ideas from the house-tops. Clerambault was vexed and disputed the point, but in order to make the situation clear to him, and with the utmost frankness, Perrotin described his surroundings, the great minds of the higher University, which he represented officially: historians, philosophers, professors of rhetoric. He spoke of them politely but with a deep half-concealed contempt, and a touch of personal bitterness; for in spite of his prudence, the less intelligent of his colleagues looked on him with suspicion; he was too clever. He said he was like an old blind man's dog in a pack of barking curs; forced to do as they did and bark at the pa.s.sers-by.
Clerambault did not quarrel with him, but went away with pity in his heart.
He stayed in the house for several days, for this first contact with the outside world had depressed him, and the friend on whom he had relied for guidance had failed him miserably. He was much troubled, for Clerambault was weak and unused to stand alone. Poet as he was, and absolutely sincere, he had never felt it necessary to think independently of others; he had let himself be carried along by their thought, making it his own, becoming its inspired voice and mouth-piece. Now all was suddenly changed. Notwithstanding that night of crisis, his doubts returned upon him; for after fifty a man's nature cannot be transformed at a touch, no matter how much the mind may have retained the elasticity of youth. The light of a revelation does not always s.h.i.+ne, like the sun in a clear summer sky, but is more like an arc-light, which often winks and goes out before the current becomes strong. When these irregular pulsations fade out, the shadows appear deeper, and the spirit totters and then--. It was hard for Clerambault to get along without other people.
He decided to visit all his friends, of whom he had many, in the literary world, in the University, and among the intelligent _bourgeoisie_. He was sure to find some among them who, better than he, could divine the problems which beset him, and help him in their solution.
Timidly, without as yet betraying his own mind, he tried to read theirs, to listen and observe; but he had not realised that the veil had fallen from his eyes; and the vision that he saw of a world, once well-known to him, seemed strange and cold.
The whole world of letters was mobilised; so that personalities were no longer to be distinguished. The universities formed a ministry of domesticated intelligence; its functions were to draw up the acts of the State, its master and patron; the different departments were known by their professional twists.
The professors of literature were above all skilful in developing moral arguments oratorically under the three terms of the syllogism.
Their mania was an excessive simplification of argument; they put high-sounding words in the place of reason, and made too much of a few ideas, always the same, lifeless for lack of colour or shading. They had unearthed these weapons of a so-called cla.s.sic antiquity, the key to which had been jealously guarded throughout the ages by academic Mamelukes, and these eloquent antiquated ideas were falsely called Humanities, though in many respects they offended the common-sense and the heart of humanity as it is today. Still they bore the hall-mark of Rome, prototype of all our modern states, and their authorised exponents were the State rhetoricians.
The philosophers excelled in abstract constructions; they had the art of explaining the concrete by the abstract, the real by its shadow.
They systematised some hasty partial observations, melted them in their alembics, and from them deduced laws to regulate the entire world. They strove to subject life, multiple and many-sided, to the unity of the mind, that is, to _their_ mind. The time-serving trickeries of a sophistical profession facilitated this imperialism of the reason; they knew how to handle ideas, twisting, stretching, and tying them together like strips of candy; it would have been child's play for them to make a camel pa.s.s through the eye of a needle. They could also prove that black was white, and could find in the works of Emanuel Kant the freedom of the world, or Prussian militarism, just as they saw fit.
The historians were the born scribes, attorneys, and lawyers of the Government, charged with the care of its charters, its t.i.tle-deeds, and cases, and armed to the teeth for its future quarrels.... What is history after all? The story of success, the demonstration of what has been done, just or unjust. The defeated have no history. Be silent, you Persians of Salamis, slaves of Spartacus, Gauls, Arabs of Poitiers, Albigenses, Irish, Indians of both Americas, and colonial peoples generally!... When a worthy man revolting against the injustices of his day, puts his hope in posterity by way of consolation, he forgets that this posterity has but little chance to learn of former events. All that can be known is what the advocates of official history think favourable to the cause of their client, the State. A lawyer for the adverse party may possibly intervene--someone of another nation, or of an oppressed social or religious group; but there is small chance for him; the secret is kept too well!