Part 13 (2/2)
”It is true everyone must drink out of his own trough, but you would at least think that we would allow others to do likewise; but not at all, we cannot enjoy our own without spitting in that of our neighbours. It is the will of G.o.d,--for a G.o.d we must have in some shape, in that of man or beast, or even of a thing, a black or red line as in the Middle Ages,--a blackbird, a crow, a blazon of some kind; we must have something on which to throw the responsibility of our insanities.
”Now that the coat-of-arms has been superseded by the flag, we declare that we are freed from superst.i.tions! But at what time were they darker than they are now? Under our new doctrine of equality we are all obliged to smell exactly alike. We are not even free to say that we are not free; that would be sacrilege! With the pack on our back we must bawl out: 'Liberty forever!' Under the orders of her father, the daughter of Cheops made herself a harlot that she might contribute by her body to the building of the pyramid. And now to raise the pyramids of our ma.s.sive republics, millions of citizens prost.i.tute their consciences and themselves, body and soul, to falsehood and hate.
We have become past masters in the great art of lying. True, it was always known, but the difference between us and our forefathers is that they knew themselves to be liars, and were not far from admitting it in their simple way; it was a necessity of nature--they relieved themselves before the pa.s.sers-by, as you see men do today in the South.... 'I shall lie,' said Darius, innocently. One should not be too scrupulous when it is useful to tell a lie. Those who speak the truth want the same thing as those who tell falsehoods. We do so in the hope of gaining some advantage, and we are truthful for the same reason and that people may feel confidence in us. Thus, though we may not follow the same road, we are all aiming at the same thing, for if there were naught to gain, a truth-teller would be equally ready to lie, and a liar to tell the truth.'--We, my dear contemporaries, are more modest; we do not look on at each other telling falsehoods on the curb. It must be done behind four walls. We lie to ourselves, and we never confess it, not even to our innermost selves. No, we do not lie, we 'idealise.' ... Come, let us see your eyes, and let them see clearly, if you are free men!
”Free! What are you free from, and which of you is free in your countries today? Are you free to act? No, since the State disposes of your life, so that you must either a.s.sa.s.sinate others or be yourselves a.s.sa.s.sinated. Are you free to speak or to write? No, for they imprison you if you dare to speak your mind. Can you even think for yourselves?
Not unless it is _sub rosa_--and the bottom of a cellar is none too secure.
”Be silent and wary, for there are sharp eyes on you.... To keep you from action there are sentries, corporals with stripes on their arms, and sentries, too, over your minds; churches and universities that prescribe what you may believe, and what you may not.... What do you complain of, they say, even if you are not complaining. You must not fatigue your mind by thinking; repeat your catechism!
”Are we not told that this catechism was freely agreed to by the sovereign people?--A fine sovereignty, truly! Idiots, who puff out your cheeks over the word Democracy! Democracy is the art of usurping the people's place, of shearing their wool off closely, in this holy name, for the benefit of some of Democracy's good apostles. In peace times the people only know what goes on through the press, which is bought and told what to say by those whose interest it is to hoodwink the public, while the truth is kept under lock and key. In war time it is even better, for then it is the people themselves who are locked up. Allowing that they have ever known what they wanted, it is no longer possible for them to speak above their breath. Obey. _Perinde ac cadaver_.... Ten millions of corpses.... The living are hardly better off, depressed as they are by four years of sham patriotism, circus-parades, tom-toms, threats, braggings, hatreds, informers, trials for treason, and summary executions. The demagogues have called in all the reserves of obscurantism to extinguish the last gleams of good sense that lingered in the people, and to reduce them to imbecility.
”It is not enough to debase them; they must be so stupefied that they wish to be debased. The formidable autocracies of Egypt, Persia, and Syria, made playthings of the lives of millions of men; and the secret of their power lay in the supernatural light of their pseudo-divinity.
From the extreme limit of the ages of credulity, every absolute monarchy has been a theocracy. In our democracies, however, it is impossible to believe in the divinity of humbugs, shaky and discredited, like some of our moth-eaten Ministers; we are too close to them, we know their dirty tricks, so they have invented the idea of concealing G.o.d behind their drop-curtain; G.o.d means the Republic, the Country, Justice, Civilisation; the names are painted up on the outside. Each booth at the fair displays in huge many-coloured posters, the picture of its Beautiful Giantess; millions crowd around to see it, but they do not tell us what they think when they come out.
Perhaps they found it difficult to think at all! Some stay inside and others have seen nothing. But those who stand in front of the stage gaping, they know G.o.d is there for they have seen His picture. The wish that we have to believe in Him--that is the G.o.d of each one of us.
”Why does this desire flame up so furiously? Because we do not want to see the truth--and therefore _because we do see it_. Therein lies the tragedy of humanity; it refuses to see and know. As a last resort, it is forced to find divinity in the mire. Let us, on our part, dare to look the truth in the face.
”The instinct of murder is deeply engraved in the heart of nature. It is a truly devilish instinct, since it seems to have created beings not only to eat, but to be eaten. One species of cormorants eats fishes. The fishermen exterminate the birds. And the fish disappear, because they fed on the excrement of the birds who devoured them. Thus the chain of beings is like a serpent eating his own tail.... If only we were not sentient beings, did not witness our own tortures, we might escape from this h.e.l.l. There are two ways only: that of Buddha, who effaced within himself the painful illusion of life; and the religious way, which throws the veil of a dazzling falsehood over crime and sorrow. Those who devour others are said to be the chosen people who work for G.o.d. The weight of sin, thrown into one of the scales of life, finds its counterpoise beyond in the dream where all wounds and sorrows are to be cured. The form of the beyond varies from people to people and from time to time, and these variations are called Progress, though it is always the same need of illusion. Our terrible consciousness insists on seeing and reckoning with the unjust law; for if we do not give it something to bite on, fill its maw somehow, it will howl with hunger and fear, crying out: 'I must have belief or death!' And that is why we go in flocks; for security, to make a common certainty out of our individual doubts.
”What have we to do with truth? Most men think that truth is the Adversary. Of course they do not say this, but by a tacit agreement what they call truth is a sickening mixture of much falsehood and very little truth, which serves to paint over the lie so that we get deceit and eternal slavery. Not the monuments of faith and love are the most durable, those of servitude last much longer. Rheims and the Parthenon fall to ruins, but the Pyramids of Egypt defy the ages; all about them is the desert, its mirages and its moving sand. When I think of the millions of souls swallowed up by the spirit of slavery in the course of centuries--heretics, revolutionists, rebels lay and clerical,--I am no longer surprised at the mediocrity that spreads like greasy water over the world.
”We who have so far kept our heads above the gloomy surface, what are we to do in face of the implacable universe, where the stronger eternally crushes the weaker, and is crushed by a stronger yet, in his turn? Shall we resign ourselves to a voluntary sacrifice through pity or weariness? Or shall we join in and cut the throats of the weak, without the shadow of an illusion as to the blind cosmic cruelty?
What choice is left, but to try to keep out of the struggle through selfishness--or wisdom, which is another form of the same thing?”
In the crisis of acute pessimism which had seized upon Clerambault during these months of inhuman isolation, he could not contemplate even the possibility of progress; that progress in which he had once believed, as men do in G.o.d. The human species now appeared to him as devoted to a murderous destiny. After having ravaged the planet and exterminated other species, it was now to be destroyed by its own hands. It is the law of justice. Man only became ruler of the world by treachery and force (above all by treachery). Those more n.o.ble than he have perhaps--or certainly--fallen under his blows; he has destroyed some, degraded and brutalised others. During the thousands of years in which he has shared life with other beings, he has feigned--falsely--not to comprehend them, not to see them as brothers, suffering, loving, and dreaming like himself. In order to exploit them, to torture them without remorse, his men of thought have told him that these creatures cannot think, that he alone possesses this gift. And now he is not far from saying the same thing of his fellow-men whom he dismembers and destroys. Butcher, murderer, you have had no pity, why should you implore it for yourself today?...
Of all the old friends.h.i.+ps that had once surrounded Clerambault, one only remained, his friends.h.i.+p with Madame Mairet, whose husband had been killed in the Argonne.
Francois Mairet was not quite forty years old when he met with an obscure death in the trenches. He was one of the foremost French biologists, an unpretending scholar and hard worker, a patient spirit.
But celebrity was a.s.sured to him before long, though he was in no haste to welcome the meretricious charmer, as her favours have to be shared with too many wire-pullers. The silent joys that intimacy with science bestows on her elect were sufficient for him, with only one heart on earth to taste them with him. His wife shared all his thoughts. She came of a scholarly family, was rather younger than he; one of those serious, loving, weak, yet proud hearts, that must give but only give themselves once. Her existence was bound up in Mairet's interests. Perhaps she would have shared the life of another man equally well, if circ.u.mstances had been different, but she had married Mairet with everything that was his. Like many of the best of women, her intelligence was quick to understand the man whom her heart had chosen. She had begun by being his pupil, and became his partner, helping in his work and in his laboratory researches. They had no children and had every thought in common, both of them being freethinkers, with high ideals, dest.i.tute of religion, as well as of any national superst.i.tion.
In 1914 Mairet was mobilised, and went simply as a duty, without any illusions as to the cause that he was called upon to serve by the accidents of time and country. His letters from the front were clear and stoical; he had never ceased to see the ignominy of the war. But he felt obliged to sacrifice himself in obedience to fate, which had made him a part of the errors, the sufferings, and the confused struggles of an unfortunate animal species slowly evolving towards an unknown end.
His family and the Clerambaults had known each other in the country, before either of them were transplanted to Paris; this acquaintance formed the basis of an amicable intercourse, solid rather than intimate--for Mairet opened his heart to no one but his wife--but resting on an esteem that nothing could shake.
They had not corresponded since the beginning of the war; each had been too much absorbed by his own troubles. Men who went to fight did not scatter their letters among their friends, but generally concentrated on one person whom they loved best, and to whom they told everything. Mairet's wife, as always, was his only confidante. His letters were a journal in which he thought aloud; and in one of the last he spoke of Clerambault. He had seen extracts from his first articles in some of the nationalist papers which were the only ones allowed at the front, where they were quoted with insulting comments.
He spoke of them to his wife, saying what comfort he had found in these words of an honest man driven to speak out, and he begged her to let Clerambault know that his old friends.h.i.+p for him was now all the warmer and closer. He also asked Madame Mairet to send him the succeeding articles, but he died before they could reach him.
When he was gone the woman, who had lived only for him, tried to draw nearer to the people who had been near to him in the last days of his life. She wrote to Clerambault, and he, who was eating his heart out in his provincial retreat, lacking even the energy to get away, welcomed her letter as a deliverance. He returned at once to Paris; and they both found a bitter joy in evoking together the image of the absent. They formed the habit of meeting on one evening in the week, when they would, so to speak, immerse themselves in recollections of him. Clerambault was the only one of his friends who could understand the tragedy, hidden under a sacrifice gilded by no patriotic illusion.
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