The Science of Happiness

By Jean Finot
Member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, of the Academy of Sciences of Rio de Janeiro, of the Academy of Coimbra, etc., etc. Author of Problems of the Sexes, etc.

Translated from the Tenth French Edition by

(Crowned by the French Academy)

Mary J. Safford

To MY VERY DEAR FRIENDS

PAULUCCI DI CALBOLI
Marquis and Marquise

AFFECTIONATELY

G. P. Putnams Sons New York and London

Tbe Iknicfeerbocfter press

1914

CONTENTS
Introduction I. A Science of Happiness Is Such a Thing a Possibility ? II. Happiness Is within Us III. Optimism and Pessimism IV. Among the Unfortunate A. In the Kingdom of Envy B. The Benefits of Sorrow C. Prejudice of Wealth V. Happiness for All A. Happiness through Goodness B. The Affections as Sources of Happiness C. The Active Life and Happiness D. Happiness Accessible to All E. Religion and Religiousness VI. A Few Catechisms of Happiness VII. The Morality of Happiness VIII. What Is Happiness ? Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

I
MAN through repeated humiliation has lost ^ faith in his star, and has been rendered powerless and wretched. Often he is unduly unhappy, because he has been told that he is miserable. So many maladies have been suggested to him that' he tosses in pain upon his bed, as if he were really ill. He has been led to believe that he cannot live beyond the age of eighty years, that he can develop only by exterminating his fellowcreatures or by laying down his life for them. He has been taught the prejudices of race, of religion, of riches. As a result man dies before his time, lives in a state of permanent warfare, hates his brother, creates around himself an atmosphere of envy, and suffers from the wounds that are thus inflicted. Man is so accustomed to hearing his misfortunes discussed that it is very difficult for him to listen to those who speak to him of his happiness. His philosophy is mournful, as well as his morality, his poetry, his literature, and especially his history. He has been painted in such gloomy hues that he believes the brighter portraits to be inferior in their essence. He does not seem to understand that it is much easier to colour things black, just as it is easier to do evil than to do good.

But man is full of contradictions. He desires long life and he yearns for happiness; yet in reality he lives only a small portion of his existence and patiently sustains himself upon woes which he creates of his own free will or permits others to impose. We shall never be able to do enough to combat these tendencies, which are so harmful to our destinies. Conflict is noble, and hope is sublime,** to use the words of Plato. So let us enter upon a battle for our happiness, a battle that is now more necessary than ever. A transformed society requires different thoughts for its guidance. The people should not only possess sovereign power, but their life and their virtues should also become sovereign. It is high time to restore to the people their happiness, just as their political rights have been redeemed. We are wrong to give our comprehension of life the same immobility that ancient Egypt bestowed upon her gods. The time has come for the reshaping of our ideas of goodness, longing, sorrow, as well as of happiness. But let us reassure disenchanted souls. We are not members of the Pangloss family, who believe that everything is for the best in this best of worlds. Our greatness presupposes our woes. But these are not life, nor do they make man. Everything depends upon the angle from which they are beheld. Democritus laughed, and Heraclitus wept over the vices of men, for all our acts seem comical to some, tragical to others. The best course is to apply them all to the advantage of our happiness. After all, if we consider man happier than he really is, perhaps some additional happiness will follow. But misfortune, in any case, will have gained nothing.

The reader will pardon the preceding explanation. It is not out of place. Men may be saddened with impunity, but even the desire to throw the windows wide open for the entrance of warmth and light is beginning to be regarded as dangerous.

II
Let no one be repelled by the word science. There is science and science. The science referred to in the title of this volume is full of tenderness. It is free from dogmatism and contains no imperative. Like the ancient Peripatetics, who taught in the form of off-hand conversations, it will strive to disengage precepts from facts, as the bees draw the honey from the flowers. Among so many useless sciences, it will at least possess the merit of dealing with the essential concerns of the entire human race. Let us hope that, on this account, many things will be forgiven. Reduced to the questions which are in the power of us all, the Science of Happiness would deserve to be constructed by all men. An optimistic science, it must be founded by the combined efforts of all who will become its beneficiaries and its artisans. Advantageous and charitable, perhaps it will play in the society of the future the part assumed by the domestic philosophers among the wealthy Romans. There is something touching in the almost divine mission which the majority of the subtle thinkers of Greece accomplished for Rome. They softened the vexations of existence, preached calmness of soul and the joys of living. While reading Seneca and Tacitus, we are

pleasantly impressed by the details they furnish concerning these ingenious comforters. They knew how to render death desirable and misfortune attractive. Canus Julius goes to execution accompanied by his philosopher. Livy, after the death of his son Drusus, seeks in conversations with Areus solace for his grief-stricken soul. Minucius suffers horribly at seeing the Emperors favours turned from him, but Caecilius knows how to convince him that heaven is in this guise sending to him unexpected happiness. The rich had their philosophers as modern society women have their regular confessors. But the philosophers were only in the pay of the wealthy, and the confessors, alas! have lost their curative virtues. Perhaps the Science of Happiness will be able to replace both, and become the vivifying spring which all souls thirsting for relief will approach to drink.

III
Personal ambition holds no place in these pages. The authors meritif merit he hasdoes not extend beyond that of striking the hour of assembly for the mutual work. By way of contribution, we will offer a few bricks for the future edifice. Perhaps, some day, they will be rejected as useless. What does that matter! The author will console himself. The certainty that others will triumph where he failed will henceforth reward him for his defeat. The Science of Happiness promises much. It will perform

still more. It will be a delightful science, filled with the flowers of experience and, above all, with the smiles of happy mortals. Tears, our inevitable companions on this earth, will doubtless also appear. But they will be quiet tears, freed from individual bitterness, in order to be of service to our fellow-men. Pre-eminently an altruistic science, it will bear all the residuum of selfishness, of pleasure, and of personal troubles toward the great river of general felicity. A charming science, animated by indulgent kindness, it will envelop, as if in a radiant atmosphere, the terrible things of life: poverty and death itself. It is an attractive science, being devoid of formulas. It is a free science, liberated from all the morose fetters that hamper enthusiasm. It will also be a science of equality, and will salute with the same contagious good-will the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the famous and the obscure. In behalf of all, of the life of all, it will strive to release the soul of goodness from evil things, the smile of happiness from the wry faces of life. In its presence, everything will harmonize in pursuit of the same object: to simplify, to increase, and to diffuse happiness upon the earth. In the midst of the deafening uproar of life, in the midst of the many dissonances that separate man and men, it will endeavour to find the celestial bond which, through the soul and the union of souls, unites all mortals for happiness.

To both the lowly and the lofty ones of earth, this divine science will sing of the beauty and the power of the treasure placed within themselves, far from all attack. It will demonstrate that, while running after things that are often illusive, and almost always inaccessible, the pursuer forgets to pluck the delicious fruits that adorn the road. Weary of our unrealisable desires, a prey to phantoms which attract us and then vanish cruelly at our approach, we shall perceive sources of happiness which with the utmost sweetness offer themselves to the poorest, most neglected, most unfortunate beings in the world.

I.

A SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS.IS SUCH A THING A POSSIBILITY?

I. During all the time that man has laughed or wept upon this earth,
he has felt the stirring of the same longing. Before him, as the ultimate goal, ever remains the ideal of happiness, the supreme crown of all the efforts of his life. Sublime in his disinterestedness, or repulsive in his egotism, man does not cease to regard the problem of happiness as the principal subject of his dreams and of his thoughts. Variations occur only in his comprehension; for, as the lover of pleasure will seek to enrich himself to satisfy the appetites of his body and of his soul, the ascetic will strive to retire from the world to obtain in his solitude the happiness for which he has an equal thirst. He understands it in a different way, but he desires it no less eagerly. Consciously or unconsciously, the pleasure-lover and the ascetic will move toward the same stimmit of the mountain, though following different paths. The long distance that separates us from the end is toilsome to traverse. Many travellers before arriving endure great sufferings. The majority die on the way. The few who attain the goal of their efforts find themselves bruised, ill, or mortally wounded. The victory, once realised, appears illusive. They perceive tardily that they have wasted their lives in trying to seize a butterfly which cannot be caught. Instead of the anticipated happiness, an unutterable melancholy takes possession of their souls. Facing the irreparable,

they succumb, discouraged, often infinitely miserable. Fewer still are those who profited by a sudden light illumining their path. They took advantage of it to change their direction. Who knows? Perhaps they only changed their Calvary. The dirges of unhappiness which we hear are very sad, but sadder still are those that pass unheard.

II. Despair even inspires a species of terror. Beware of the writers

who would dare to maintain its inanity, or oppose to its sneers a moderate trust in life. A refined thinker, such as Paul Stapfer, will not hesitate to compare them with fat hogs that grunt contentedly over being well fed and warm in their sty. To admit and to cry out our woes said Richard Jefferies, is the duty of all beings endowed with reason, for in vain will the worst pessimist describe things in the darkest hues. All that he can say will still remain far inferior to the smallest particle of the reality. Schopenhauer considers all those who do not believe that life is the worst of frauds, narrowminded and shallow Philistines. Dissatisfaction with life is, in its essence, aristocratic. It is somewhat like a garment made in the latest fashion, in harmony with the most refined taste of the most up-to-date leaders. Almost all of those who take seriously their character of missionaries of the truth to men, do not cease to proclaim the law of desolation and of disenchantment. An aggravated melancholy invades our souls like an impetuous torrent sweeping away defenceless houses. Not only do we no longer dare to resist it, but we prevent opposition by covering with ridicule those who are striving to build embankments. Yes, they say in their turn, fate is often hard and unjust. Our sufferings are numerous and

our pangs in living burst forth at every moment of our existence. But precisely because we are living in the darkness, let us try to bring into this gloom a few rays of hope and joy. Wretchedly mocked and scorned, these men remain silent, making way for those who mourn and weep.

III. So wails and lamentations echo around us. Everybody believes

and calls himself miserable. Does not this result from a simple misunderstanding? Are we not the victims of a mirage which is all the more dangerous because it constantly increases the number of those who are sacrificed? Should the sole end of progress be to augment our distress, while increasing our comfort? There are numerous scientists who assert that the woe which burdens the human race will become more and more heavy and fatal. Shall we not say that the progress of human evolution displays itself in an inverse ratio to the advance of happiness? What is this inevitable law which would shut us within the tragical dilemma of being able to develop only to the detriment of our happiness? One phenomenon impresses us when we consider our fellow creatures. While advancing in life, they usually forget the present and live only in the future. When the latter deceives their hopes, they recognise the fact that they have not lived. Around us, before us, behind us, therefore, we behold only people who have fallen on the road, often duped, and almost always sorrowful and wretched. The moralists usually regard happiness with inconceivable scorn. It drags along behind ethical systems like an importunate shadow. Yet, without the intervention of Happiness, there is nothing stable in human institutions or in moral systems. When it is lacking, there is nothing real, nothing solid in the foundations of life. What is

the advantage of overlooking its importance? Happiness, like the gods of ancient Olympus, always arrives in time to make its weight felt in the life of human beings.

IV. The principal problem of our modem life consists in reconciling

the old and the new faith. The bygone one taught us that life on earth is only a dung-heap out of which grows the invisible Paradise of our dreams; that of the present day believes that life has a purpose in itself. We must be happy on earth, with the assurance of being still more so in the future life, say the believers. We must be happy on earth, for future happiness is only a deceptive mirage, say the sceptics. But both should think, like Goethe, that the object of life is life itself.

V. Adapting a quotation from Plato, the Middle Ages drove

Happiness from the city. Ranged behind Kant, modem moralists banish from morality all thoughts of happiness. In the history of so many systems that have fallen into ruin, perhaps only the Stoics and the Cynics have spoken of its divinity humanely, with love for those whom it shuns and with joy for those who benefit by its miraculous touch. This has not prevented their doctrines from being thoroughly moral. They knew, first of all, how to identify Happiness with Truth. The Stoics, it is true, had the courage to exalt Happiness. But their Happiness, in its essence, is sorrowftil. It has a dismal severity. It is always mourning lost illusions. Their joy in life is only the serene thought of death. Yet they take leave of the living like guests rising from an endless banquet. Marcus Aurelius vainly teaches that we ought not to grieve.

His soul exhales poison. The divine balance of the best of men is merely a myth. We meet with it only in Renan, who transports the serenity of his own soul into those of his heroes. We might say of the joy of living and of the happiness of the Stoics what Walter Pater has said of the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius: that we ought to move only with solemn, muffled tread, as it beseems us to walk in a house where lies a dead man. They do not weep; they do not tear their hair; they do not give themselves up to paroxysms of boundless grief. This is much. Only the victories of recent life can illumine with rays of joy and true happiness the austere abode bequeathed to us by our ancestors.

VI. Vainly is happiness driven from the cares of the mind. It returns
invisible, through doors which are believed to be hermetically sealed. It takes its place triumphantly in spite of all prohibitions. The noblest of doctrines, Kants categorical imperative, with its absolute moral necessity, conceived outside of and even in opposition to every idea of Happiness, crumbles logically, when deprived of its support. When a voice commands, Schopenhauer has justly said, it proceeds from within or from without us. It is simply impossible that it should not have the tone of menace, or else that of promise. The person, in listening to either, becomes interested.And the interest, in the main, is only the thought of Happiness. Why then do we not march openly under its banner? Why do we not bow before its ubiquity, embracing, as it does, even our dreams and the aspirations of the soul? Let us try to direct its power, to study its operation, to facilitate its beneficent evolution, to make its laws triumph. Let us, in short, try to render it a science.

VII. Why should we scorn happiness, joy? According to Spinoza, joy

is perfection. Morality based solely upon duty, has failed. We no longer believe in Kant, but we believe more and more in the only real thing which exists in us, that which, in spite of ourselves and even against our will, guides and leads us: the perception and even the appetite for Happiness. When this consciousness is perfected and ennobled, Humanity, in its turn, will find itself ennobled and perfected. All the conflicts of bygone centuries waged around the moral ideal have for their purpose the crushing or the triumph of the ego, the renunciation of human personality or its free development. Self, trampled down and destroyed, became the synonym of virtue. On its ruins were expected to grow the divine qualities of man, as if a luxuriant blossoming could come forth on bare rocks. The reaction, as usual, wandered into excess. Despairing of saving mankind in the mass, it confined itself to causing the triumph of a few exceptional beings. The worship of the strong man, the demi-god, lauded by the Renaissance, and taken up by egotists of every degree, imposes a renunciation of the wrong kind. Asceticism immolated the individual in behalf of the invisible being; egotism sacrifices the community for the benefit of a few stronger and, especially, more rapacious beings. The first disarmed us by its disinterestedness: the second shocks us by the unrestraint of its appetites. Calmness will be restored to our inflamed aspirations only when we admit happiness for all in the same degree.

VIII. The right to life, the right to wages, the right of the aged and
the infirm to the aid of the Government, and so many of the other victories of modern life, will end by having their supreme

achievement in the right to Happiness. Est Deus in nohis. God is in us all. The human soul, inspired by religion or by science; man, son of God, or man, source of the intelligence, will end by bowing before this primordial principle of the human personality. Life will divest itself of uniformity by dissolving itself according to the innumerable varieties of souls. There is no higher sovereignty than self-mastery, said da Vinci. Only, what the peerless Leonardo claimed for himself must be admitted in favour of all, including the humble and the dispossessed. Let us aid them to regain their dominion by rendering life sweet and friendly. They must be rulers in the realm of their ego> for they are all men. Why philosophise beside the mark? Let us question human nature. Relieved from all restraint, it will answer us with brutal frankness: Happiness is my organic need. I require it as I do food or air. We eat poorly, we breathe badly, and yet we live. But, to make the human ego unfold and flower, let it be developed in Happiness. People who are nobly happy constitute the power, the beauty, and the foundation of the nation. All who seek and obtain Happiness contribute to the prosperity and to the moral development of the community. They form the flower and the hope of their native land. The perception of Happiness is immutable. It is the part of the wise man to give to the invincible desire a lofty and divine meaning.

IX. Our conceptions, influenced by past asceticism, by false piety,

and by ignorance of the divine laws, prevent us from accepting the right to Happiness. They even cause us to reject this new duty which modern life imposes: the duty of being happy. We ought to be happy,

as we ought to love our own city, to be devoted to its interests, and to work for the benefit of the community. The happiness of our native country and of our fellow creatures is dear to us. So much the better. Let us begin by caring for our personal happiness. As Ellen Key has justly said, it is impossible to attend to the feeding of our neighbours until we have satisfied our own hunger and thirst. A person suffering from typhoid fever finds it difficult to nurse his friend. A reformer who, indifferent to his own happiness, expresses the wish to obtain it for others, resembles a blind man who would fain guide those who can see. A little patience, and we shall witness, in the city of the future, how the most recent duty, that of being happy, will take its revenge and triumphantly occupy the place of- its annihilated rivals. For Happiness, like tears and laughter, is communicable. Learn to be happy, or still better, be happy, and every one around you will be happier and better.

X. The recommendations of the aesthetes to live and to die in beauty

should have for a corollary to live and to die in Happiness. After having fully exhausted our ego, after having realised its tastes and its aspirations, we shall lie down in the evening of our life with a sense of serenity and satisfaction akin to that the labourer experiences who falls asleep after the days work given for the benefit of his land.

XI. Life is not only worth the trouble of being lived; it imposes,
besides, the duty of living our own life. Whoever has not been happy has failed in his duties. Perhaps he has passed through life in a dream, but he has no more lived than a lunatic lives when he unconsciously runs over the roofs of houses.

Those who are not conscious of their Happiness, those who live outside of its earnest appeals and its genuine needs, recall the soldiers in Detailles great picture, Le Reve. They have fought in a dream, suffered and enjoyed in their slumbering imagination, without profitto themselves or to their native land. Modem thought openly proclaims or indirectly betrays the cares and the duties of individual Happiness. John Ruskin rightly asserts that the will of God is that we should live through Happiness for the benefit of the lives of our brothers, and not by their poverty and their death. Men mutually help one another by their joys, but not by their sorrows. John Lubbock makes joy an elementary duty of the modern men. He tells us that we ought to be as joyous as possible, because to be happy ourselves is an excellent method of aiding the happiness of others. The pessimists, who grieve over the sadness and the disappointments of life, or the optimists, who exalt its beauties, bow with the same reverence before the god Happiness. The rebellion of haughty intellects such as Nietzsche, Shelley, Carlyle, or so many others, and their fierce egotism, are merely the result of their ignorance that happiness is a possibility for all. Believing it unattainable by the mass, they claim it for the demi-gods or supermen. But true happiness is so much the greater and deeper in the proportion that it embraces and unites in a fraternal chain more men, more countries, more worlds. As joy does not mean simple enjoyment. Happiness must not be confounded with anti-social egotism or the satisfaction of low instincts. It will be the part of the Science of Happiness to point out the foundations of Happiness, at once thoroughly noble and infinitely lasting, foundations which are accessible to the whole human race. XH. We do not allow ourselves to be intoxicated by the religion of

self-sacrifice, of altruism toward all and for all, and especially by that of the future existence. They pass by the side of life. Their worship has never been anything but a worship of words. Impracticable, and not practised, they have falsified the divine meaning of our ego. Now, the law we have had should never be a chain. We are quits with it, according to the counsels of a moralist, when we have wrapped it carefully in a purple shroud, in which the dead gods sleep.

XIII. Nature, we are told, knows only the species. She neglects and
dooms the individual. Nature is calumniated. Science is libelled in the same way. Pereat mundus, fiant pilulce, shout certain healers. Long live the pills, perish the patients! What would the pills do without the patients, what would the species do without the individual? Can an edifice be preserved by removing the stones of which it is composed? Does nature aim only at preserving the species? What do we know about it? We have small acquaintance with her metaphysical intentions. Yet those which she took care to reveal to us show that, if she pays little attention to the individual, she takes no greater account of the species. The history of the fauna and of the flora is only one vast cemetery, where are found millions of dead species. Some among these defunct varieties were admirably organised; perhaps they might even have disputed mans place, like that anthropoid, the Dryopithecus, who seemed predestined to a brilliant future. In reality, nature has no consideration for either individual or species. So we should not permit ourselves to be led into error by her vague plans, but occupy ourselves instead with the real happiness of man.

XIV. Egoisms vary, as our souls differ. There are sublime ones,
which furnish the weapons for the noble conflicts of life and spread the contagion of energy, of hope, of joy. We should do wrong to speak ill of love of self, as we should err in slandering nature because, by the side of heavenly landscapes, it possesses marshy waters. What are the abnegation of the saints, the disinterestedness of hardened altruists, except variations of the numberless forms of egoism, which assumes every shape, including that of personal sacrifice. The acquirer of wealth who gives to his children a portion of his treasures; the mother who loves life, yet risks her own at the bedside of her child attacked by typhoid fever; the lover who sacrifices himself for the lady of his heart, are only yielding to the impulses of their lofty egoism. We defer the realisation of our egoism for a future payment, or we coin it at once. We consent to be rewarded in heaven, or we seek satisfactions here below. It procures divine pleasures for the god in man; it furnishes animal joys to the beast in man. It enthrones itself in the depths of our souls and rules there according to their essence. The Greeks, in their beliefs, which bear the imprint of sincerity, saw in their gods thoroughly selfish beings. The gods of Olympus acted solely under the impetus of their personal interests. Our Phariseeism attributes to men qualities which the ancients denied to the gods themselves. After all, if the genius of nature, listening to the stupid desires of certain philosophers, had uprooted from our souls the love of self, mankind would have ceased to live. In losing the essential principle of the conservation of the species, man would have lost, at

the same time, the necessity of continuing his existence. Never would he have consented to drag it on for the sake of others. By classing self-love (egotism) with the most degraded tendencies of our hearts, we have succeeded in defaming Happiness, which has become almost a shameful desire of our ego, instead of being its glory and its crown. Have not certain moralists gone so far as to proscribe the word Happiness?"

XV. There is something singular in the fact that among so many

sciences of which mankind is proud, not one of them should be consecrated to Happiness. Is it possible? Such a science needed first to be planted, so that later its fruits could be examined. It should have been given the opportunity to interest the mass of humanity. All the nations of the earth should have been able to communicate in its universally admitted laws. Profiting by the observations and lessons that came from the four quarters of the globe, it would have been able, in its turn, to embellish the lives of human beings of whatever origin, colour, or faith. Religions in the name of heaven, philosophers in the name of human fraternity, have always preached the necessity for peace. Yet wars have not ceased to stain the earth with blood. For a century, we have been taught that peace is necessary to our happiness, and the horror of war invades our souls and is implanted in our minds. Why should we reproach men for seeking unrealisable goals? Is not progress a continual march toward the star? Sainte-Beuve uttered a profound thought: In aiming at impossible things, we finally obtain possible ones, which otherwise we should never have reached/* So long live the Science of Happiness, based upon the possibility of Happiness for all, through all!

According to Carlyle, the*word happiness ought to give place to a higher condition, blessedness.

We marvel when we think of the wealth of elements which the Science of Happiness will meet upon its way. All its sisters, in union, are really working for its triumph. Hygiene or medicine, philosophy or morality, technical or political sciences, the biography of the illustrious dead, all are keeping incalculable treasures for the youngest bom. Amid these fields of precious stones, she will have only to point out and to gather whatever objects she may choose.

HAPPINESS IS WITHIN US

I. When we begin to reflect upon the importance of some of the

storms of life that we have weathered we are amazed to discover their insignificance. The most intense moral sufferings pale singularly in the light of reflection, and assume a new form. We no longer even understand past sensations and terrors. The same idea applies to the great dramas of our existence. Under their immediate domination, our minds are bewildered. We are not able to think, and we do not even wish to survive them. Their wounds appear incurable, and our life appears to be blighted for ever. Let us examine ourselves a few days after the cruel ordeal. Released from the brutal influence of the moment, our mind is beginning to investigate the situation. Looking within ourselves, we are astonished to see how greatly our feelings have changed. What has become of the irreparable misfortune? What has become of the eternal suffering? We are seized with amazement. Could grief and misfortune amuse themselves at our expense? Would reality foil them? Let us permit another interval of time to elapse, and then begin again the task of comparing our feelings. Another surprise awaits us. Our sorrows, our acute emotions of despair have suffered a further diminution. Their intensity having disappeared, their faded forms are no longer recognisable. Something vague has replaced our grief. A day comes when we smile indulgently at past misfortunes. We no longer find in them anything except a subject of study of the changing conditions of our soul."

This transformation often occurs suddenly under the influence of a person dear to our hearts, whose influence swiftly drives away the clouds that darken the real aspect of things. For consolations have no other object. When they emanate from a gifted mind, they aim simply to snatch the mask from the incidents which are governing us. If they do not always attain their goal, it is because intelligent comprehension of the souls of others is so rare.
*A mothers grief for her lost child doubtless threatens to last a lifetime. But we are considering only the causes of ordinary unhappiness, the source of daily sorrows, and not exceptional forms. Yet even the most cruel sufferings are finally softened.

II. Do not the various degrees of our unhappiness, its constant

transformation in our minds, the dependence of its intensity and its extent upon the sensibility of the individual, all prove that the source of our sufferings is found within ourselves? The external world makes our sensibility vibrate, and it responds like a piano to the touch of the performer. But the latter will vainly possess amazing power; he can produce no sounds without the aid of the instrument. A still better analogy of our relation to misfortune is that of an artist standing before the notes of a score. The sweet or mournful tones of our voices follow the external signs, but the unhappiness, like the sounds, is within ourselves. From this condition of affairs one comforting truth is apparent. Happiness and misery being in the majority of cases only the fruits of our own sensibility, and the latter forming, in its turn, only a portion of our minds, we become, by that very fact, the authors of our happiness and our grief. Circumstances occurring outside of ourselves are difficult to conquer, but the formation of our ego, its mode of existence and of

thought are within our power. Since we find it an impossibility to change the factors without, let us alter those within. Being unable to aspire to the mastery of things and of men, let us try to govern and direct our desires. It is difficult for us to have servants, palaces, and millions; it is easier to drive this longing from our hearts. When, serious and thoughtful, the mind comes to dwell upon the things it formerly so ardently desired, it will reveal to us, with a smile, their emptiness. So long as people believed in the devil, he showed himself to men. The abandonment of the belief in his omnipotence was sufficient to make him cease to disturb even their dreams.

III. A calm estimate of our desires often results in their

disappearance. There comes a period even when the eager appetites for inaccessible things are almost entirely appeased. And as reflection eliminates the fear of evil spirits, the cause of unhappiness to superstitious people, deliberate thought, coming to our aid, can always affect and often dispels our superstitions of luxury, of wealth, of false ambition, and of so many other torments that influence our life. The happiness thus gained becomes an acquisition equalling all the blessings of this world. We no longer believe solely in visible things. But the existence of the famous dead, of men honest and wise in their sincere confession, brings us countless proofs that happiness is in direct dependence upon our ego. We seek, cries an ancient moralist, hiding-places, pastoral grottoes, rustic huts, mountains, sea beaches, for what purpose?since thou art permitted to retire within thyself. The Stoics justly said that the happy man is he whom chance could neither elevate nor humble. Whoever succeeds in

subordinating his happiness to the state of his mind, creates for himself an inviolable refuge, an impregnable fortress, a just, kind, and trustworthy master.

IV. In reflecting upon the troubles and the pleasures of life, we easily
perceive that both are merely the children of our brain. That is what gives them the final impress and classifies them in our intelligence. Our opinion of things, the principal source of our happiness, is only the product of our mentality, the fruit, in its turn, of our education. There is a sort of continuous chain, all of whose linkseducation, mentality, opinionsare thus dependent upon ourselves. Glory excites, animates, sustains, and ruins so many human lives! Yet so many others are left untouched! The desire for wealth, which poisons the existence of the modem man, acts only upon certain individuals. Power, which attracts and fascinates some persons, does not appeal to the imagination of others. In certain countries, like France and the United States, there is even a class of politicians from which are recruited the aspirants to the government. It is always the same little nucleus which furnishes the masters; the other members of society, often even the best ones, turn aside with disgust from what they term the wretched political caldron. There are people who would give half their lives for a rare decoration or a title of nobility. There are others who undergo all sorts of humiliations in order to be able to frequent what they call good society, composed for the most part of idle and intellectually narrow people. The happiness of some consists in sitting at the table of the Caesars, others find it in companionship with the kings of the mind. Some dream of the heights, mounted upon which they will be seen by the greatest number of their contemporaries; others of modest refuges and an

ideal forgetfulness. Let us follow the endless scale of our dreams of happiness, and we shall see their limitless variations.

V. The things around us remain immutable in their essence. It is

man who torments himself and suffers by coveting them. If the objects of our ardent desires had a soul, they would fill the world with sarcastic laughter. Perhaps that might save the world, for it would understand ridicule. When we think that our entire life depends upon certain words which, by dint of repetition, become our opinions, we are justly astonished at our negligence concerning them. Most persons spend more time upon the arrangement of their hair, than they do in forming or correcting the opinions on which their happiness depends. We are vexed with people who give us bad advice concerning the purchase of furniture. We do not forgive a man who has sold us a lame horse. We inquire diligently concerning the quality of the wines we want to buy. We blush at having been deceived by an unscrupulous banker. Yet we accept and retain without control false opinions concerning many things. We refuse adulterated wines and ill-baked bread; we are on our guard when we are eating in a doubtful place; but we maintain a constant intercourse with people whose ideas we know to be false and their souls depraved. Their action is far more dangerous, for they sow around them misfortune and corruption. The human race will realise one of its noblest reforms when it understands that it is just as important, when seeking happiness, not to live on false opinions as it is not to eat adulterated foods.

VI. The substance of things escapes us. It has, moreover, no share in

our happiness. It is in vain that the objects of our longings remain the same, our attitude with regard to them does not. Wealth, ambition, power, fame, the distinctions or the charms of polished society retain their virtues, and never change. The ribbon of the Legion of Honour retains its crimson hue and that of the academic palms keeps the violet shade. Yet the ardent longings of some are offset by the contempt of others. Nay, more; how is it that we should so consumingly desire the very ribbon to which, a few years later, we shall be entirely indifferent? The same object which inspires some with overwhelming thrills of yearning makes many others smile! Where we see a source of happiness, others behold only a source of ridicule. While our education tends only toward concrete goals, a shallow comprehension of life and the conquest of wealth, there are superior minds which detach themselves from these things and declare our education and our life, as the majority of men understand it, defective from the standpoint of happiness. The Faubourg Saint-Germain, fixed in a conventional mould, has a fully established physiognomy. Yet its vices and its charms appeal differently to the taste of men. Some of our writers, to form a portion of it, have sacrificed their independence and their originality, while many others would not give up a single line of their works to enter its precincts. How profound is this thought of Emerson: Man is a monarch, who abdicates when he goes into the world! The sole value of life, Renan tells us, is through devotion to truth and goodness. This principle, though fatal to worldly success,

nevertheless is fruitful of happiness! The purpose of a noble life should be an ideal and disinterested pursuit! Augustin Thierry, blind and ill, is enraptured by the delights obtained through his devotion to science, which yields more than fortune and all material pleasures. In his touching exhortation to Brother Leo, Saint Francis of Assisi tells us that even if our brother throws us on 1:he ground, rolls us in the snow, makes us feel, while beating us, every knot in his cudgel, we shall find perfect joy therein, if we bear these things with cheerfulness for the love of the Saviour. What a charming exclamation was that of Saint Theresa in speaking of the demons: Unhappy creatures, they do not love! Love of truth or of science, love of the Saviour, as well as love of our neighbour, are individual sources of happiness. These sources are found within ourselves, and the objects or the entities outside count as nothing.

VII. Let us be more explicit. The desire for wealth appears to be

general. The omnipotent million exercises a universal influence. We are told that it crushes the firmest characters, and reduces to fragments the most stable principles of societies and of individuals. Yet the best men remain insensible to its appeals and its smiles. Its attractions and charms also dwell, not in itself, but in us. It is we who adorn, we who bestow upon it invincible powers and numberless allurements. We need only examine it from a certain point of view, and its intoxicating beauties will vanish forever.

VIII. One of the teachers of my childhood, who excelled in relating

parables, said to me one day:

There is a country which no one enters except myself. When once there, I find a resplendent kingdom, full of mysterious charms. I am received as a respected and beloved master. The inhabitants kneel before me. Sometimes sorrowful because they have succumbed to invincible temptations; sometimes joyous because they have resisted the snares of life, they confide to me their griefs and their joys. I listen with interest, sometimes pitying, always delighted. Then, in taking leave of them, I say: Beings of my being, continue to think of him who lives in you, as you live in him/ And the moments spent in this fascinating kingdom, amid fraternal thoughts and souls, are the sweetest of my existence. Why must I go there so rarely? A time will come, however, when every one will have the faculty of spending a large portion of his life in this happy country; for access to it will become more and more easy. Long after, I understood the meaning of these words.

IX. The more we reflect, the more we perceive that Happiness dwells
within us. Through a regrettable lack of comprehension, we wear out our lives in seeking it elsewhere. When, fatigued and bewildered, we return within ourselves, we find the divine flame dull or extinguished. Our sufferings, our despondency, our woes, are almost invariably only the products of our thoughts. What is more terrifying to the minds of the majority of men than the dread of inevitable death? Yet it seems sweet and consoling to all who have thought of it differently. The death inflicted upon the Christian martyrs in the Roman arenas freezes us with terror. A thrill of horror makes us tremble at the idea of beings mutilated while alive. And yet it is said

that Saint Perpetua, tom by a bull, before dying, bound up and arranged her hair because she did not wish to seem to mourn in the midst of glory and joy.

X. We hold a position toward life corresponding to that of the

tourists toward the tea-houses into which people take their own provisions. Everything that constitutes our pleasures or our sorrows is carried within and drawn from our own selves. External circumstances influence man, but man acts upon circumstances. He often creates and almost always modifies them. Circumstances possess the value which we are able and understand how to give them. Coarse souls remain under the domination of circumstances as primitive ones do imder the rule of the elements of nature. By perfecting himself, man obtains more and more mastery over events. Everything that surrounds us becomes angel or fiend according to the condition of our hearts, rightly asserts the author of Wisdom and Destiny. Joan of Arc hears the saints and Macbeth the witches, and nothing befalls us which is not of the same nature as ourselves. The important thing is to become better acquainted with our souls, an acquaintance which later may aid in their development. There can be no happiness greater than that of bringing our life and our thoughts into harmony. When we lead an existence in conformity with our aptitudes, with the mysterious inclinations of conscience, we feel the most intense gratification that is attainable by the human race.

XI. The ideal sense of delight consists in spending wittingly our

inward treasure. Daily life vainly bends us to its requirements.

Behind it, independent of it, remains a vast and inaccessible empire: it is that of our inner life. There we can live as sovereigns, happy and proud amid our royal thoughts. The delights of the inner life are completed by those of action. The return within ourselves which does not degenerate into morbid reverie, develops our energy. The two worlds of thought and of action thus gain, in their contact, both intensity and purity. As sleep, by strengthening the organism, enables it to meet the labour of the day, salutary reflection, the pilgrimage into the depths of our ego, facilitates our domination of the external world and its utilisation for lofty purposes. Examples aboimd. Let us choose the most conclusive. After having spent his nights in writing the book. On the Subject of Himself, Marcus Aurelius, ever handsome and young, during the day directs, in the most admirable manner, one of the most profitless expeditions. In this cruel campaign against the Quadi and the Marcomanni, worn by dullness and fatigue on the banks of the Gran or the Danube, at Carnuntum or Vienna, the best of men draws from the exquisite intimacy of his own ego the strength for the military profession he foimd so distasteful.

XII. The objects so ardently desired by all somewhat resemble the

gods created by man, for they owe to man their best qualities. It is man who has endowed the gods with all the attractions which he holds dear. Their magnanimity, their omniscience, their compassion for human misery, their supernatural goodness or wickedness, what are all these qualities if not the gifts generously bestowed by man on mysterious beings? After having created them, he has not ceased to adom, to fear, and to love them. Take away these borrowed qualities

and what will be left? Let us do the same with respect to the things that we covet. What will remain to fame, to dignities, to all the baubles which we so fervently desire? Nothing, or almost nothing.

XIII. In a time of distress, astronomers themselves turn toward

heaven, to seek there the divine power which is capable of lessening their sufferings and of sharing their troubles here below. Yet they are the first to know that they have as much chance of finding it beside or below, as above them. Power of words! Thine essence is eternal. In vain do we break so many idols, thine will live as long as mankind.

XIV. From our early youth, a benevolent fairy remains at our side,
offering to accompany us through the vicissitudes of life, and shields us with her ever-watchful protection. This is no fairy of legends. She exists and develops in her young and glowing beauty. Invisible, she allows us a glimpse of her sympathetic virtues and of her infinite charms. She embodies all the aspirations of our lives. In her expressive personality are hidden all the sources of our desires, our happiness or our woe. Riches, fame, distinctions, health, she holds and offers to all who come to her and will receive her guidance. Divine fairy that does not cease to accompany mankind from its humblest origins, indefatigable in thy generosity, inexhaustible in thy goodness, imposing in thine omnipotence, thy name is will . Why do we write of the gods, asks the philosopher, except to win love for the divine nature within them, and to show that this divine nature lives also, and will live eternally, in the heart of the human race? Why glorify the will, except to impress vividly its untiring and inexhaustible action? It is the beloved sovereign who, unlike other monarchs, bows to the desires of all who love, revere,

and are prepared to follow. It promises much and performs still more. Devote yourself to its cult sincerely and faithfully, and it will place under your rule the various causes on which your happiness depends. A time will come when all the purposes of pedagogy will tend toward this dominant goal: the liberation and development of the will, and this will be the prelude of the reign of Happiness.

XV. Let us suppose that some day we are told: A god is within you, a
god who asks nothing better than to place himself at your service. He is awaiting your summons with touching patience.Nothing discourages him. His complaisance is equalled only by his discretion. Vainly, for years, you have ignored him. Unheeded, concealed in a corner of your consciousness, he waits your pleasure. But as soon as you turn to him, he will come, calm and serene, at your summons. His worship is neither sanguinary nor difficult. All that you do for him inevitably profits only yourself. In his boundless generosity he keeps nothing for himself, and will reward you fivefold for whatever you wish to do in his favour. Why, when in quest of a certain support and powerful protectors, do we forget the ideal and divine friend who offers us everything and asks nothing?

XVI. In all ages, chosen minds have bowed before the benefits of the
will. Kant goes so far as to say that the will has relations with the noumena. The will, he teaches us, possesses even a curative property Man can do much by the sole energy of his will. Through its instrumentality he can even modify his physical condition, save himself from hypochondria, and conquer spasmodic conditions.

According to Kant, the will is the first condition of health. With the powers of suggestion triumphing, the power of the will triumphs. Modern science has instituted almost a worship of suggestion. Utilised as a beneficent force, subordinated to the reasoning and rational will, suggestion might radically transform and embellish our life. The ancients knew the power of suggestion, but to modern times belongs the distinction of having procured for us a lever by which to utilise it at our pleasure. Faith removes mountains, says a proverb as old as the world. The science of hypnotism and of suggestion only serves as an illustration. Carpenter quotes the case of a man who, though very weak in muscles, one day raised a heavy weight because he believed it trivial. Faith in miracles produce miracles. The old sally of Pomponatius is still true: You can calmly put in the place of the bones of a saint those of any other skeleton. The cure would follow if the patient were ignorant of the change. And, in fact, the water of the Loire or of the Seine is often as beneficial in its effects as that of Lourdes, provided that the invalid is not aware of its origin. Under the influence of concentrated attention, redness or pallor appear on the face, swellings of the limbs and hemorrhages take place, the heart beats more quickly or more slowly, pains are felt in the places indicated.Goethe had already said: Man can command nature to eliminate from his body all the foreign elements which cause him suffering and disease. O sweet and intoxicating power of words! The remembrance of the heavenly joy which the martyrs of every age have felt is sufficient to enable us to understand that the human race will always bow beneath the yoke of the word that has become faith. Read in

Rufinus or Lucian the tortures inflicted in Lyons in the year 177 upon numberless saints. They believed that a divine stream flowed from the side of Jesus to reanimate and refresh them. And they felt revived and refreshed. The fragile Lyonnese maid-servant, Blandine, exasperated the gangs of executioners by constantly asking for more tortures, more suffering. They exhausted all the known torments. Her thirst for martyrdom still besought more. Suspended from a post, her body was exposed for several days to the bites of wild beasts. Placed in a red-hot chair, her flesh was burned in many places. Then, enclosed in a net, she was flung to a bull. The animal, at the sight of this burned and burning body, hurled it furiously into the air, and let it fall back again to the ground. Yet the gentle Blandines face did not cease to express the ineffable joy of the martyr. Suffering became to her the celestial joy of salvation. Deacon Sanctus of Vienna beheld with rapture his body converted into a bleeding, deformed mass. His most sensitive parts were burned with copper heated to a white heat. Yet Sanctus did not cease to repeat, in a peaceful voice, the divine formula. They believed that they were at the festival of their glory, and all were glorious.

XVII. What radiant horizons are opened to us by this material

action of the mind upon the body. Are not our whole lives, all our acts, our happiness, and our troubles, really the results of an environing suggestion? What is pedagogy, except such an action exerted upon childhood? We live under the empire of political, religious, and social institutions, under the influence of our neighbours and our friends, under that of our passions and our feelings.

Psychotherapy the new medical method, even teaches us that certain diseases vanish, as if by enchantment, in consequence of suggestions continually repeated. Let us modify them, let us lessen our susceptibility to those that poison our lives, and render ourselves more sensitive in respect to beneficial suggestions. In this way we shall change even our mode of living and of feeling. The transformation of the feelings affecting our souls might render the hypochondriac the most sociable of men. Alchemists dream of the transmutation of metals. With tireless zeal, they sought for means of changing iron and copper into gold, or of drawing from gold the elixir of long life. How much more important seems the transmutation of our feelings and our sensations! After all, this is possible. By devoting himself to it, man will arrive at controlling external incidents. They will become to him precisely what his soul desires that they should be. The important thing in the events that befall us is their influence upon our minds. By transforming facts at the dictates of our soul, by allowing them to act only within the jurisdiction of our ego, we shall dominate life. This change is not always easy. Nothing is more true than this statement. If it were otherwise, pedagogy would become the most exact of all the sciences, and the Science of Happiness would be full of infallible dogmas. We should make happy people, as we make officers of the academy. But Happiness, offering itself without effort, would lose its charms. To operate in an efficient manner, suggestion requires a method, a discipline of the mind. The time is not far off when it will be understood that, since its first steps commence with pedagogy, it is the part of the latter to mark out the first path. Watching over the happiness of those entrusted to its care, it will endeavour to impress

the young souls with essential suggestions concerning the value of wealth, of ambition, of fame, or of happiness itself. The formation of the moral personality, we are told, is the purpose of pedagogy. The formation of the happy personality will doubtless be the aim of the pedagogy of the future. Let us add, for the consolation of the moralists, that the Science of Happiness will be essentially moral.

III. OPTIMISM

AND PESSIMISM

I. What was termed, toward 1830, the disease of the age is, in truth,
the disease of all the ages. Like the bigot who dreams of Paradise and labours only for the damnation of his soul, mankind craves solely happiness and creates along its path nothing but misery. The human mind is often only a place of torture where all who enter are crucified. Religion, philosophy, and literature, sisters who are frequently at odds, affectionately clasp hands, when the object is to crush the joy and happiness of their faithful friends. The futile tears which religions have made men shed would form an ocean capable of drowning our contemporaries. Philosophy and literature second them to the best of their ability. All sow sadness. Then we harvest their fruits only to fill our hearts with bitterness. Sons' of ancestors with withered souls, we inherit their evil inclinations, and add to these the sorrowful products of our now lives.

II. The condition of mind which the Germans expressively define by

the word Katzenjammer has become the normal state of the human race. We are in the situation of people on the morning after nights of debauchery and insomnia. Like Poland which was intoxicated when Augustus had been drinking, we are suffering from the excesses of our forefathers. Let us consider with what eagerness the intellectual guides of mankind devote themselves to the task of barring the way by

establishing all sorts of mental no thoroughfares. One would say that they see only the darkest, the most dismal comers of the mind. After having diligently hunted them out, they take delight in imprisoning us within. The despair and dissatisfaction with life assume such varied forms that there are some for every taste. Alluring and subtle ones for delicate souls; repugnant and depressing ones for coarser souls; melancholy ones for dreamy souls; those with a slight make-up for feminine souls; profound ones for virile souls dull, disturbed, or limpid, they are coloured with every shade. As vice assumes different aspects, including that of virtue, the desolation of life often disguises itself under the charms of gaiety. And the scholarly person of our day, stifling under the dense smoke poured forth by the intellectual bonfire, finds himself infinitely wretched.

III. Our minds are the legitimate or illegitimate children of those

that have preceded them. Products of their predecessors, they preserve visible or mysterious traits of these forerunners. Cerebral labour begins with appropriation and not with creation. Pedagogy aims only at facilitating intellectual digestion. The thoughts of our lives are often only the products of well or badly performed digestion. We are often ignorant of our ancestors, but they exist nevertheless. Our sensations, and sometimes our feelings, are, therefore, only the sensations and the feelings of our masters.

IV. Here is a gay people, with a pleasant philosophy. It is regarded as

a generous provider of remedies for the embittered moods from which its neighbours are suffering. We attribute to this people the most cheerful, the most harmonious conception of life. This people is the French nation. Yet we need only pause before its representative

minds to see that they are corroded by every evil, beginnmg with that of thought and ending with that of love. Whether it is Taine, Baudelaire, Maupassant, the younger Dumas, Renan, Zola, the Goncourts, Leconte de Lisle, Anatole France, or Sully-Prudhomme; Parisians, provincials, cosmopolitans; poets, thinkers, or philosophers,all show us, behind their melodious phrases and conventional smile, a soul convulsed by profound contradictions. Their elders Chateaubriand, Sainte-Beuve, or Lamartine also give evidence that similar dramas were being enacted in their minds. Finally, what shall be said of Bossuet, of Racine, of Corneille, and of so many other famous authors? Yet these are the men who have formed our understanding and nourished the emotions of our youth. From all the heights of French intellect escapes the dreariness of desolation. Almost always present, it is not always visible. Voltaire, the most well-poised, the most attached to life, states gravely somewhere: Happiness is only a dream, and sorrow is real. And elsewhere he says: Flies are bom to be devoured by spiders, and men to be devoured by troubles.** True, at this period, Voltaire had suffered from many acts of treachery. Again he tells us: I do not know what the eternal life is, but I do know that it is a bad jest. According to Diderot, We exist only in the bosom of grief and tears. We are the sport of uncertainty, of errors, of necessity, of illness, of wickedness, of passions, and we live among knaves and charlatans of every description. The moralists chime in with those who are disgusted with life. La Rochefoucauld, Charron, La Bruyere, Chamfort, and Vauvenargues, all utter the same heart-rending cry, Life is not worth living. The writers of other countries are distinguished, perhaps, by despondency that is less harmonious and more noisy. The German

mind resembles most closely that of the Hindoos. This remark is derived from Taine. The banks of the Ganges and the banks of the Spree have a certain resemblance, or let us say with Jacquemont, The absurdity of Benares and the absurdity of Germany have an air of kinship. Sorrow is everywhere the same; it is only its grimaces which vary.
*Charrons Sagesse, the source of inspiration of nearly all of our writers of aphorisms and maxims, is an incessant lamentation concerning the woes of life. The beasts, he affirms, have great reason to thank nature, that they have not so. much mind. The first proof of human wretchedness is that its entrance into the world is vile and shameful. There is shame in creating it, honour in its destruction. There is concealment, the lights are put out while creating it; there is glory and display in destroying it the lamps are lighted to sec it die. The two greatest men, we are told elsewhere, C$sar and Alexander, each killed more than a million men, and did not leave one to succeed them. What would Charron say,Jf he were living in our days? The condemnation of organised massacres, the glory of a Pasteur making that of Napoleon pale, would doubtless have spared him the mournful sentences whose essence taints his Sagesse.

V. The supreme expression of the melancholy which leaves its

impress upon contemporary works, like the autumn twilight upon the sky, is incarnated in this never-to-be-forgotten line of Leconte de Lisle: Maya! Maya! Torrent of changing chimeras! This sadness is mingled with a horror of the universal death. Like the flow of the tide, it swells, mutters, rolls, and goes from beach to beach morning and evening. Pantheist and deist, sceptic and believer, lover and contemptuous scorner of life, poets and realists, optimists and pessimists, all seem profoundly saddened by the ever changing and ever uniform aspects of the dream which constantly shapes and reshapes itself. The flesh, tortured while living or dead and flung into the earth, the grass of oblivion which grows

over all that we have loved, these are the monotonous and heartrending sighs which nevertheless lull and do not cease to lull humanity. Even those who speak of the ceasing of life with love, desire thus to hide their fears of death, as Baudelaire pretends to be enraptured in the presence of the final decay, which causes him deadly shuddering. The cry of anguish of the author of Meditations (7th, ''Despair'') mournfully sums up the inmost sensations of all those wounded in the battle of life. What crime have we committed, to deserve to be born? And when we reflect upon the genesis of this lamentation which, like the dominant melody in a Wagnerian opera, goes through the literature and the philosophy of these latter centuries, we discover in the first place a baleful heritage bequeathed by the Christian religion, or rather by all the religions united.

VI. Buddhism expresses a limitless pessimism. It begins by denying

the creative principle and ends by condemning life. All that it accepts from the latter is its disappearance, its extinction, Nirvana. Death becomes the blessed and ardently desired crown of existence. Our life is filled with sorrows, and these result from longing. Must longing then be debarred? Yet how can this be done, while abandoning existence? Reflective minds need not wait for its final disappearance to enjoy the delights of nonentity. We can, or rather we ought, to hasten the arrival of death by freeing ourselves from the troublesome demands of life. The ears should be stuffed, in order not to hear its commands, its desires, its aspirations. The fivefold attachment to terrestrial things is sorrow,

Buddha teaches. This, O monks, is the truth concerning sorrow: Birth is suffering, old age is suffering, disease is suffering, death is suffering, union with aught unloved is suffering, separation from the beloved is suffering, and failure to obtain the object of desire is suffering. . . . Nothing except pain is produced in life, and pain will remain on the earth as long as consciousness endures. When we go to the source from which disgust with life has come to us,' it is surprising to find how pale and even colourless the Schopenhauers of all the ages remain in comparison with their revered master. A feeling of intense disgust with everything that constitutes the essence of life animates the prophet. Nothing finds favour in the presence of his disappointment, which penetrates the joys and the sorrows of life; man's triumphs and experiences; love and pleasures.
*See Samyuttaka-Nikaya; A nguitura-Nikaya; The Hours 0} Dzammapada, etc. See also the classic sketch by M. Oldenberg: Buddha.

This, O monks, is the sacred truth concerning the suppression of pain. We must utterly crush desire, renounce it, free ourselves from it and allow it no room. . . From joy is born suffering; therefore, whoever is liberated from joy, no longer suffers. From love is born suffering; whoever is released from love has no anguish. . . . And the true Brahmin is he who, liberated from life, has found extinction, that is, finds himself freed from every desire, every weakness. The negative principle of Buddhism is also transported into the

doctrine of Cakya-Mouni. Contemplation is the object of life. Everything that constitutes the joy and the charm of existence is rejected, and men merely vegetate. The supreme ideal is the unconscious crumbling of the years, which vanish in the gulf of emptiness, without leaving any traces upon our personality. Man should aim to resemble granite, over whose surface the tempests and the rains glide without leaving any trace. By dint of seeking to render the soul insensible, it is killed. Reduced to the state of a corpse, it no longer feels anything, and thus ceases to exist. The good sense of the unprejudiced man remains perplexed in the presence of this multitude of mystic formulas behind which is concealed a truth so simplelife is a misfortune which benefits no one. But why cultivate it under mountains of verbiage, instead of simply giving it a dismissal. Suicide being within the reach of all, it is surprising that it should not have been accomplished by all who have preached the incurable evil inherent in human life. Brahminism regards the world and life as regrettable accidents. Judaism has rendered this life very sombre, while forgetting to illuminate that of the world beyond. The predominant care of Christianity is to poison the little joys of life. Of all the things in the world, says Pascal, the Christian shares only the sorrows, not the pleasures. Yet Christianity has taken care to kindle the fires of hope in these vague and uncertain skies. But the scepticism of our times has breathed pitilessly upon these, and the scattered dreams have left behind only the desolation of empty space. To the privileged faithful followers whom doubt has spared, remains the divine luxury of souls. But those who can still enjoy this luxury are rare. So much the better for the onward march

of humanity, for this delight of souls is the death of bodies. It is the sentence of life. Already, under the Fathers of the Church, civil society had been compelled to rebel against this form of happiness. Like Buddhism, it threatened to destroy life.

VII. From all religions proceeds a breath of despair. It blows

through the world like a tempest. It also blows in the form of gentle, scarcely perceptible currents of air. It filters into the most mysterious circumvolution of our brains. The emancipated thought, which appears to be most hostile to it, is also imbued. The pessimists have inherited the living or dead religions. The German pessimists, who have left an almost indelible imprint upon modern philosophy and literature, only illumine with a Buddhist torch troubles which are often utterly alien to our latitudes. And like the deliverers of olden times, the pessimists of the present day are toiling for the weakening of the vital foundations necessary to the prosperity of the individual and of the community.

VIII. The rare principles of serenity preserved in the Christian

dogmas are compromised in our time. This is chiefly due to the solvent influence of the German philosophers. Hartmann even goes so far as to base the birth of Christianity upon sin and evil. Without these two roots, Christianity, he says, would not have lived. And since evil remains the eternal attribute of man, only suicide could deliver us. Bahnsen and his co-religionists preach the benefits of suicide for the help of others.

IX. I have never understood why we speak of the serenity of the

Greek religion. Its conceptions of death, and its threats in regard to

souls in torment, appear inhuman. They lack beauty and proportion. If the ancients did not suffer too keenly from them, it is because their minds, still young, less trained, had more resistance than ours. After all, we know less of their life than we know of the life of our country neighbours. Yet let us admit that the ideas of their dramatists and their historians are deeply tinctured by apprehensions of a cruel and unjust fate. The gods laugh at the arrogant man, says ^s- chylus. Cassandra laments over human affairs, for if they prosper, a shadow annihilates them. The gods are evil by nature; they envy man and mankind. The chorus of Antigone wails: There is no way for mortals to elude the misfortunes of destiny. Sophocles has given utterance to some thoughts which are worthy of the most bitter pessimists. The most reasonable thing is never to be born; but when we have seen the light, the next best thing is to return whence we came.*** Where shall we turn? From every direction we hear only mournful cries. The gift of penetrating the mysteries of the other life has been bestowed upon Greek genius, but what it brings back freezes us with terror. Alcestes (Euripides) returns from the realm of shades, pale and exhausted, almost dead himself from having witnessed so many horrors. Theognis (Elegies) also tells us that it would be better not to be born, but once born, the best thing would be to pass the gates of Hades as soon as possible. According to Plutarch, life is a punishment and mans greatest misfortune is to be born. The apprehensions of the Hellenes reappear among the Romans. Pliny the Elder enumerates with cruelty all the woes of man. He places him below the other species peopling our planet. The great naturalist thus paraphrases the sally of old Homer, according to

whom of all the beings that breathe and move upon the earth, not one is more contemptible than man. Seneca speaks of death in the same terms as do Sophocles or Theognis. Is it not for him the best invention of nature?

*CEdtpus at Colonus. Natural History (7th Book).

Man knows little of his ills, he tells us later, if he does not regard death as the fairest invention of nature! According to Seneca, society resembles an association of wild beasts: the husband seeks to kill his wife, the latter conspires against her husband, the son looks forward to his fathers end; stepmothers are engaged in poisoning,' etc.=" The soul of the gentle Marcus Aurelius was steeped in gloom. Long in advance of Hamlet, he torments himself before the bones of the illustrious dead. Alexander of Macedonia and his mule- driver have been reduced, after death, to the same condition. All is but corruption! he cries. Like that other hero of Shakespeare, he compares life to an insipid force, for all that we esteem in life is but emptiness, baseness, corruption. Kis optimism, in short, is only the resignation of a sufferer. The divine serenity of the Greeks and the Romans is found only in the imagination of their commentators. Plato alone, in ancient times, frankly proclaimed the joy of living. The inexhaustible spring of his optimism would have had enough nourishment for future ages, but the Platonic golden thread was soon submerged beneath the deluge of pessimistic thoughts. When we find it again among the NeoPlatonists, its principles have become gloomy and dull. The same comment applies to the Neo-

Pythagoreans. Both schools, exasperated at being unable to find truth through reason, think that they discover it in death. Thus in the dwelling of the bard of life sprang up the growth non-existence.
*Consolations to Marcia.*Seneca, Treatise on Anger.

The cause of the deception of the historians is the paradisaical life of the ancient gods. All the mirth having been once gathered in Olympus, scarcely anything remained for poor humanity. The Christian hell, borrowed from Homers realm of shades, affords us an after-taste of what must be the posthumous life of the children of Hellas. For all that is buried is not always dead. And the divinities that for ages have fallen into decay do not cease to shed their melancholy smile upon the life of our own day. Let us be just. The theistic and polytheistic religions have no monopoly of despair. Almost all the modem doctrines of immanence (pantheistic, which ought to draw from Nature reasons for joy) find only the accents of desolation. The Absolute of Schelling thus is united with the Idea of Hegel, the Will of Schopenhauer, the Unconscious of Hartmann.

X. The modem soul becomes incensed amid the pain of living, of

thinking, of dying. The meaning of life appears to be perverted. Turned toward the real, or losing itself in dreams, it always betrays a profound restlessness, which unsettles existence as a little carbonic gas disturbs a bottle of pure water. The equilibrium of the molecules being disturbed, their harmony is not discoverable. There is room for a Saviour who will some day destroy the

causes of the whirlpool and restore to the human soul its pure and refreshing clarity. Perhaps the task will not be a very easy one. It is a mistake to believe that the white light is entirely simple. It is composed of seven colours. The cleamess of the soul is the result of many combinations, which must be discovered and diffused throughout the world.

XI. In the interval, let us admire all that human ingenuity has
imagined and invented to jeopardise our happiness. Its efforts, if we piled up the aggregate of all the ages and of all the nations, would form a mountain capable of hiding the sun. Look at a single islet of the mind, the corner of a century of French intellectuality. Analyse poets like Baudelaire or Musset, Lamartine or de Vigny, philosophers like Renan or Taine, novelists like Flaubert, Maupassant, Goncourt, Zola, or their descendants, historians, sociologists, and you wi'l find among all these representatives of the French mentality of the second half of the nineteenth century the same feeling of disgust with life. Sensual or depraved, refined or sublimated, rational, raving, or resigned, the pessimistic conception dominates. It assumes every form, but these forms cover the same desolation. Those who have studied the overflowing sadness of all these disenchanted souls attribute their melancholy chiefly to the riot of romance. This is one of the causes, but it is not the only one. Their melancholy dates back a good deal farther, and the germs may be found in Lucretius or among forgotten thinkers and philosophers of whose very names we are ignorant. Artists and authors, with their deeper sensibility, and their almost morbid impressionability, allow themselves to be more influenced by the afflictions which fill the air. They submit more easily to big words which often do not shelter big

realities. The life without and the life within rarely harmonise in their souls, which are exposed to every tempest. Imbued with dark ideas, their sensibility becomes still more inflamed, and, ever astir, refers everything to disappointment and sorrow. A great poet who is regarded as a great philosopher, Alfred de Vigny, intoxicated by all the theoretical deceptions which his soul had imbibed as a sponge absorbs the liquid within its reach, declared with the firmness which an ideological conviction bestows, that hope is the greatest of our follies. * In this prison called life, whence we go forth one after another to death, we can expect no walk, no flower. According to the happy definition of Remy de Gourmont, it is the point of honour of boredom. We must be bored, it is a sort of higher duty. This, moreover, is the pet word of many of his contemporaries, and of the poets and novelists who will succeed him. Leconte de Lisle even endeavoured to surpass it by plainly entreating divine death to liberate us from time, quantity, and space. He besought it to restore the repose which life had disturbed.

*A. de Vigny, Journal.

As existence did not contain a sufficient number of the germs of despair to satisfy him, he spught to borrow, and did so among the Hindoo poets and philosophers. There is a sort of fraternity of dull despair which unites in its ramifications the entire world. Vanished generations have left their griefs in it, and those of modern times constantly add to the fund. Widen the base of observation, advance toward those who appear to

be influenced by the harmony of life;you will find the same anguish of hearts, concealed beneath the charms of smiling irony. The greatest genius among them, Anatole France, will even tell you that life resembles a huge manufactory of pottery, where all kinds of vases are made for unknown purposes, several of which, broken in the mould, are cast aside as worthless fragments without ever having been used. These are the children who die. Others are employed only for absurd or disgusting uses. These vessels, France says, are we ourselves. Elsewhere, the gentle philosopher Anatole France speaks with still less caution of the entire solar system, which, he asserts, is only a Gehenna, where the animal is born for suffering and death.Even those whose mission is to brighten our existence frequently offer us only a soul tinged with the emanations of the universal sorrow, which in spite of or against their wishes filters into it with their personal vexations or with the deceptions that escape from most of the moral or intellectual systems. As a grain of sand is sufficient to warp our mental machinery, a misinterpretation of a moral problem also suffices to overthrow for ever the serenity of our souls. An incorrect conception of death or of the future life has doubtless disturbed our inward peace far more than the most essential conditions of our daily life. Thus it happens that even the gayest writers are often a prey to dismal melancholy. The case of Mark Twain, one of the greatest humourists of our times, is very typical in this respect. In his little book What is Man ?, published under the screen of anonymity and distributed among his friends, Twain reveals the sufferings caused by his determinist faith. The idea that we are only mere instruments fashioned by circumstances which deprive us for that very reason of

all merit, all originality, and leave us merely the humiliation cf being simply machines upon which we cannot even exercise any control, deeply tortures his mind. In his Dialogues between the Old Man and the Young Man, the latters soul is seen gradually invaded by grief for vanished dreams. Then cannot God make an honest man in the real meaning of the word? asks the Young Man. Twain answers: No doubt He might have done so, but He never has. Thus may be explained many little masterpieces of this exquisite story-teller where, behind faces illumined by a smile, we .perceive mournful dramas hidden in the background of men and of events. While small minds bewail their own fate, great ones whelm in their despair the entire world. They even include inanimate matter. Literature, which guides and inspires our sensibility, does not cease, as if intentionally, to feed it upon the disenchantment of life. So many generations, bowed under the burden of this morbid heredity, nevertheless rise smiling on the present, and cherishing the dream of the future! So there is something in our ego stronger than this layer of pessimist alluvium. This mysterious element, constantly repressed and stifled, ever young and living, must be inherent in human nature. What matter whether it is innate or acquired? The essential thing is that it shows itself under the influence of life itself. It makes the child laugh and gives to mature age joy in effort. 'Perhaps the philosophy of Julian Sorel was true, cries Stendhal, but its nature was to make us desire death. No, it is false, because we do not cease to desire, and to be keenly interested in, life.

No, it is false. To be convinced of this, we need only look around us. All our efforts are summed up in these few words: Make life longer and happier. Faith in life, instinctive and profound, does not cease to mock its time-honoured foes.

XII. Let us observe the great, the greatest of the human race, those
who dream only of annihilation, and we shall see that they love the less substantial things at the disposal of life: worldly success, living or posthumous renown. Monuments of insensibility, they bleed through all the pores of their ego. In short, they love life. In spite of themselves, they show it to others when they are sincere. They are imbued with this love, and do not hide it when, mere comedians, they labour only for the applause of the crowd. Victims of their parts, the}^ often resemble those actors who consider themselves wretched after being poisoned by the speeches of the Marquis de Posa or of Chatterton. But lo! a smile from life, and the most morose lose their masks. Schopenhauer, the most implacable among the scorners of existence, fled from Berlin in 1831, driven out by the cholera. While preaching the suicide of the world through the absolute continence of the sexes," he becomes the father of an illegitimate child. An ardent patriot, he buys presentation swords for his comrades, but takes care not to go to the war himself. According to him, the deaf and the blind are happy. The former do not hear, the latter do not see their contemporaries. But Schopenhauer spent his life in theatres and gatherings where people enjoy themselves and talk. In reality he worships life, and only seeks to inspire a disgust for it in other peoples minds. He despises money, but he carefully secretes it and spends it with the hesitation of a miser. Whoever teaches that our life

is the happier in proportion to its brevity, plans to enjoy it to the utmost limit. His delirium of enormity, a cruel malady which held him underwits control nearly all his life, exasperated him. He believed himself to be one of the greatest of men, and there were only a dozen friends and admirers to recognise the fact. So the irascible philosopher consoled himself by covering with contempt the human species which was incapable of rising to his heights.

*The World as Will and Idea. * Parerga and Paralipomena,

It is well to keep constantly awake in our soul the scorn deserved by the majority of men, he wrote in a note-book which he entitled Spicilegia. Let your tone make those around you understand ... I am not like you.'' Elsewhere he told us that a missionary of the truth to the human race, like himself, ought not to fraternise with human beings. But this despiser of men noted at the same time, with morbid satisfaction, that an Englishman, who had merely seen me, said that I must possess an extraordinary intelligence. A Frenchman remarked concerning me: He is a superior being.' An Italian, who was an entire stranger, greeted me with these words: Sir, you must have done something great. I do not know what it is, but I see it in your face. " Within him were two beings and two minds. Was his system the philosophical expression of his life, ^ or was it in contradiction to the course of his existence?^ The undeniable fact exists. His philosophy was written on the margin of his life. The tragedy of the universal misery is only his personal

tragedy, amplified and elevated to the rank of an epic. He suffered martyrdom, because his sensibility was morbid to excess. He felt not only the stings of fate, but also those of his own mind. And withal, he was fiery and passionate. But for the melancholy which held him aloof from the world, he would have ruined his health very speedily, destroyed by the orgy of the senses. The contradiction in his mental tendencies enabled him to recover himself. He lived in and through his ideas. He pondered over the cruel destiny of man until the moment when his own destiny, released by age from the inconsistencies of his temperament, and by success from the cruelties of fate, permitted him to regard the world differently.
' Griesbach, Gespraeche und Selhstgespraeche. 2 E. von Mayer, Schopenhauer Aesthetik.

He had, moreover, an intuitive sense. He wrote as an artist with a rare and penetrating faculty of vision. He not only went to the heart of things, but far beyond. Behind the sadness that surrounded him, he penetrated to the misery of the world. In a page of subtl analysis, one of his biographers' thus describes his exceptional vision: He sees with a glance whose keenness no one has equalled the imposition of everything that constitutes the joy of life: the emptiness of pleasures, the vanity of love, which makes the individual the unconscious servant of the race.

*Kuno Fischer, Schopenhauer.

But his senses do not subscribe to the judgment of his

intelligence, and the dualism which follows was abolished only by old age and success. Both soothed his sensibility and his irritated uneasiness, which used the dark sides of life to fabricate his thoughts of sorrow and disappointment. For his hatred, as well as his scorn of mankind, formed only a superficial layer of his consciousness. In the depths lay faith in the better destinies of his fellow-creatures. He even believed in progress and in human perfectibility. The shallow and imbecile optimism which he accused of every crime and did not cease to flout and ridicule so long as he was a victim of his own sorrows, sharpened by his morbid sensibility, took the opportunity for revenge and exhibited him in amazing changes. The contradictions between what he desired to make us believe, and what he believed later, were flagrant and profound. Have not people gone so far in recent times as to write a sketch, which is not paradoxical, upon the Optimism of Schopen- hauer,^ for he himself makes the essential foundations of his theory crumble, by admitting in his last work the possibility of happiness, and giving us counsels from his own experience for its enjoyment.'' Carried away by this confession, so alien to his mind and to his temperament, he desires the life of a centenarian to profit by the fruits of his own wisdom and by the charms of existence which he had known how to secure.

*Th. Ruyssen, Schopenhauer.

While his entire system of morality revolves around the dogmas relating to the unchangeable character of man, or the wickedness which results from knowledge and experience, he later insisted upon the benefits which, nevertheless, may be derived from these.

The man who never ceases to talk of the death of all the religions, ends by lauding his own. The triumph of his true philosophy will cause the smiling death (euthanasia) of all religions. And naturally mankind would then realise great progress and would thus advance toward a better destiny. His hatred of Christianity (because it had inherited, among other things, from Judaism its faith in free will and in salvation by works) was insensibly modified and he might be surprised in unconscious coquetry with the New Testament. The religion of the Jews had been odious to him, and had engendered his philosophical anti-semit- ism, which, by a cruel irony of things, was afterward adopted by the most fervent believers in the dogmas branded and vilified by Schopenhauer.

*St. Rzwuski. *See his Aphorismes sur la sage conduite de la vie.

But the New Testament, under the influence of Vedism, which had penetrated its first essence, had also conceived of the salvation by grace, that is by absence of occupation and prayer. For that very reason, it was determinist to the utmost, directed against personal responsibility and the desire to live. The Judaising elements, however, were on the watch. In this conflict, waged from the dawn of Christianity, between the Vedic influence and that of the Old Testament, the latter has had the upper hand. The ethics and the faith of Brahminism and of Buddhism, battered down, finally ended by separating from Christianity, which, distorted, and showing a bastard form, became odious to the philosopher of Frankfort and harmful to the human race.

But this destroyer of Christianity dreamed only of founding another religion with Schopenhauer as prophet, and to render this religion viable he resorted to all sorts of superstitions, notwithstanding the fact that he constantly scoffed at the Christians because of their superstitions. He even had the audacity to tell us that certain inspirations to which he owed his redemption came to him directly from the Holy Spirit." Nay more. Far from limiting himself to inactivity, the only consistent, normal consequence of his doctrine, he employed all the resources of his dialectic to effect the adoption of his faith, his religion. He made allusion to apostles, to dogmas, to evangelists. He admitted his worship by images and relics. What becomes of his radical pessimism under these circumstances? Especially, what becomes of that forlorn life, the daughter of blind will? What becomes of the task, which, according to him, was imposed upon the will that, conscious of itself, had only a single mission: that of abolishing its work by the total cessation of desire? Having fallen from the top of a sixth story, we find ourselves unexpectedly placed in a comfortable bed, and receive for pillow a gospel redolent of all the emanations of a happy life, mingled with those of the holy Vedic and Christian Biblical writings. With an artlessness that provokes a smile, he mentioned quasi miracles of which his doctrine seemed to be the object. And this sublime scorner of religions, of progress, and of the desire to live, is, after all, only a haughty, misguided man who uses all the weapons presented by his frequently ingenious, profound, and original mind, to re-establish and fortify the ideas that he has made it his mission to combat.

^ New Paralipomena.

M. Ernest Seilliere said justly that Schopenhauer, after all, was only a mystical Christian who rejected the fetters of dogma and the burden of ecclesiastical discipline. Precisely because he was mystical, or rather romantic in the highest degree, he has succeeded in influencing all whose earnest souls tend toward the mystery and the reveries developing from the reverses of life. But there are few who are free from these tendencies. The enumeration of the minds which have received and still receive the imprint of his pessimism" sheds a blinding light upon the mystical appetites with which even those most rebellious to this current show themselves imbued. Certain sides of Schopenhauers talent and logic have only strengthened the influence of the mystical and romantic portion of his work: the simplicity of his doctrine; his clear, exact, often caustic and witty style; his work, comparable to that of a work of art, for it proceeds from the direct vision of things; his thoughts, which develop almost by the means of intuition, at times, as he himself said, when all will was slumbering heavily and judgment was uncontrolled; his ideas finally, collected into several volumes, which offer us the entirety of all the philosophical and moral sciences, beginning by a system of nature, one of religion, an ontology, a philosophy of law and of history, an individual and collective psychology, and a theory of knowledge. He has known how to deal an almost decisive blow to the morality of the categorical imperative, that invulnerable and invincible nightmare of all modern moralists, and these are so many reasons which have not ceased, and never will

cease, to attract the modern soul toward his pessimism, which is often pernicious and dissolvent. By exerting an action either direct or through a surrounding atmosphere pervaded by his thought, this philosopher of dismal appearance will doubtless continue to poison our reasoning. But we need only look behind his apparent doctrine, intended to scandalise and impress his contemporaries, to the more matured one which his own experience has succeeded in grafting upon the first, to conceive and to comprehend the abyss which separates the reality from our theoretical speculations." The song of the siren of disenchantment often has irresistible modulations. It calls and urges us toward the gulf. But on reaching its frightful chasm, we perceive, first of all, the disappearance of her who drew us there. When, perplexed, we rush to find her, we see her seated calmly in a delightful shelter from which she smiles upon life and carefully thrusts aside everything which might sully or disturb. Toward the end of his days, he abandoned the part which he had assumed. Fame took him by surprise, smoothed his brow, and removed the sour expression from his face. Artists flocked to paint his portrait, women to deify him, disciples to weep with him over the miseries of the world. All found an old man who was delighted to live. The bugbear of men became a charmer by whom they were attracted and fascinated.
A whole literature exists in the world to prove that, after all, Schopenhauers doctrine, so contemptuous of romanticism, really owes to it its origin, and is deeply imbued by its spirit. See among others the works of Hoeffding, M. Meyer, Hettner, Ruyssen, Seillifere, etc.

The inability to grasp the value of life, to enjoy its good sides and to combat its evil ones, is merely the result of circumstances. The

cruelties of the individuals fate are often far more responsible than are the defects inherent in the world order. Remove from the calumniators of life the private reasons that render it odious to them, and you will remove the venom from their souls. The rational being, which man ought preeminently to be, frequently shows himself the most irrational. Compelled to accompany his inevitable companion, life, and having the condition of his existence solely in and through it, he will make it odious, for the mere pleasure of being able to speak evil of it. He will do violence to his logic and will invent the most outrageous fables in order to intensify his own sufferings and to multiply those of his neighbour. Nay, he will even protest that those who rebel against his calumnies, and oppose to them a more accurate conception of men and things, are only Philistines of contemptible and inferior essence. As the Will to live does not appear to himsufficiently mischievous, a Hartmann will substitute for it his Unconscious; and by dwelling upon this power, which he never enabled us to comprehend, he decapitated on his way all the causes that facilitated for us the harmony with existence. His divagations are summed up as follows: Happiness? Formerly it was placed among the blessings of this world. Happiness was youth, goodness, beauty, fame. This belief is at an end. Our happiness has been transplanted into an inaccessible and ultra-terrestrial world, into the immortality of the souL But it has been perceived that the point in question concerns only the illusions of our imagination, which have no more consistency than our dreams. This happiness has been finally placed in a strange building

of future humanity, but how can these distant and non-existent hopes compensate for the troubles of our life here below? By following out his idea to the end, Hartmann would teach the benefits of a cosmic suicide. The author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious would discount in advance the discovery of a scientific apparatus which might repair the error and the crime of the Unconscious through which we have been born and live. Only his cosmic logic has paused at the threshold of his own person. This apostle of death in common has yielded to his love of life by the side of his fellow-men. And this life has remained dear in spite of all the ugliness in which he had garbed it. Surpassing his master, E. von Hartmann^ even maintained the sole conclusion which follows logically from the premises established by Buddha and taken up again by his Occidental pupils. The world has only to disappear. God Himself has finally perceived the insufficiency and the imperfection of His work. Lofty morality consists in mans cooperation in order to shorten this pathway of suffering and of redemption. * Let us listen to Hartmann. How was the world created? The German philosopher gravely teaches us that God, being unhappy in His eternity, has amused Himself by launching the infinite series of phenomena which form the world, in order to afford Himself diversion. Evil has resulted, for His misfortune has only increased. Passing from this singular ontology into real life, Hartmann rejoices that a day will come when human beings, in consequence of the

progress of science and discoveries, will obtain an explosive powerful enough to blow up a universe.

*Phenomenology of the Moral Consciousness.

Our planet having disappeared, God will be delivered at the same time as man. This eccentric doctrine forgets, for the occasion, the modest part that the earth plays in the economy of the universe. Thinking only of his own salvation and of that of his brothers, Hartmann has completely forgotten the fate of the Lord, who, after the disappearance of the earth, is obliged to contemplate the countless millions of stars, whose persistent existence will not cease to weary and displease Him. There is something greater than the eternal misfortune that weighs upon this world, and that is the dismal fancy of the philosophers who try to cure us of it. The Unconscious of Hartmann, which has thus replaced the Will of Schopenhauer, is scarcely more exhilarating. It might be said that his Unconscious possesses almost a conscious wickedness, for that is what produces the evil and the cruel illusions of happiness. Pain is everything in our life, and pleasure plays no part in it. Even in an equal degree pain has a coefficient higher than that of pleasure. An animal that eats another feels less pleasure in eating it, than the latter experiences discomfort in being eaten. In vain do we seek Happiness. It is not to be found, for the human race has never discovered it.

XIII. The life of Timon is re-enacted in that of all the scorners of

mankind who have succeeded the disenchanted Athenian. In short, it is only the pessimist philosophers who, slaves of their own doctrine, seek to make us believe that the world is modelled upon their dogmas. Leopardi is the most irascible of the poets of nothingness. Every living being, to whatever age he may belong," in whatever world or on what planet he may have seen the light, is fatally devoted to irremediable misfortune.Happiness, whatever it may be, is impossible to attain. He does not confine himself to ranting about the wretchedness of men. According to him, all nature is a prey to the most excruciating sufferings. Go into a garden, even in the pleasantest season of the year, and you will find everywhere traces of pain. Yonder rose is injured by the sun that gave it life; it is drooping, withered. Farther on, see that lily at whose most vital parts a bee is cruelly sucking. This tree is infested with ants; that one with caterpillars, snails, flies, mosquitoes.

*Dialogue of the Earth and the Moon.

2 Dialogue of Plotin and Porphyry.

There is not a lawn in perfect condition. And meanwhile you are crushing the grass in walking. Then Leopardi, deformed and suffering, has reasons for smiling at life. His philosophy brightens. The poet who saw around him nothing but hospitals and cemeteries, begins to enjoy existence. He even believes in the perfectibility of man, and judges his dissolvent ideas severely. I praise, he tells us, and I glorify those doctrines, however false they may be, which produce noble, strong, generous,

and virtuous deeds and thoughts, useful for public and private welfare. Well done! That is language worthy of a friend of man, concerned for his future and the normal development of his interests. The same thing happens to our conceptions of life that happens while we are looking at Nature. We see her sometimes too far away, sometimes too close at hand. We see her, above all, with the eyes of the moment. The angle from which we look at things, creates the appearance of the things. While some grieve over the spectacle of a cruel and unmoved Nature, others behold with delight the great Whole of which they form a part. Some tremble before the terrors of the night, others enjoy her awe-inspiring beauty. The sun blesses and gladdens; infinity sometimes alarms and sometimes consoles. Yet Nature, the night, infinitude, always remain the same. It is we who see them differently.

XIV. Chateaubriand sowed along his entire career, with unequalled

zeal, sadness and disenchantment. Was he at least sincere? It is enough to remember with what childish vanity he enjoyed all the pleasures of life, his distinctions, his titles, his fame as a writer, and his conquests as a selfish and incorrigible lover. Moreover, he expressed his weariness in words so carefully chosen that we begin to doubt the reality of his sufferings. A day came when his own confessions opened to us a large window upon the mystery of his soul. In the work may be read this disturbing phrase': It was in the wood of Combourg that I began to feel the first attack of that weariness which I have dragged with me all my life, the melancholy which has constituted my torment and my felicity.'" And suddenly, delivered

from the magic of his style, we have perceived a man intoxicated by his own greatness; under the cover of sadness, a feeling of pride in being distinguished from the world of mortals.

*Memoires d'outre-tomhe.

Renes melancholy was, after all, only a pleasure of self-love, a delight of rare essence, a special felicity of a genius in love with his rarity and seeking to impose it upon the admiration of his fellowmen. Nevertheless, this spurious sadness has cast a veil of profound melancholy over the world and caused more tears to be shed than the most formidable wars. The cult of sadness, in the main, is only a fad. Its great injury is in lasting too long a time. It somewhat resembles the mania of death, which settles from time to time upon disconsolate mankind. The fourteenth century was pre-eminently one in which death reigned as sovereign mistress. Morte nihil melius'' (There is nothing better than death), said men, fascinated by its strange grimaces. Entwined in one enormous saraband, Germans, Swiss, Dutchmen, and Frenchmen began in 1374 the fantastic dance of death. Its victims, whose number constantly increased, only sharpened the taste for death by rendering it more desirable and more enviable. It filled religious books and church windows with its images; insinuated itself into the carvings of the furniture and the drinking-cups; took its place triumphantly at the doors of houses and of churches, and enthroned the hideous skeleton and the empty skull in poetry and the arts. But the shout of triumph of the Renaissance echoed through the world. The worship of death, pursued by the divine works which

reality drew from the most illustrious hum.an beings, vanished and disappeared. The happy heart will also some day reap its revenge upon the boundless sadness and pessimism that never cease to corrode it. This new Renaissance, so much to be desired, will bestow a renewal of genius, and the triumph of human happiness. Everything cries out to man that the calumniators of his happiness are wrong. This inward voice is stronger than the real deceptions of the unfortunate or the claptrap of the flatterers of nothingness. Nourished by thoughts of desolation, we still turn to hope, as plants turn toward the beneficent light. Optimism penetrates our life as the hope of success and happiness influences our actions. Deprive man of it, and his development will be stunted and paralysed, if not destroyed. The crowding and the formidable competition from w^hich the liberal professions suffer, deprive the newcomers of the smallest chances of success. All the civilised countries are in the same predicament. Physicians, Iscwyevs, and engineers complain that they earn less than v/orkmen. Yet everywhere there is the same throng of candidates for privations and ill-success. No, they come full of the hope of grasping the marshals baton and enjoying the favours of the m.ysterious fairy who, from time to time, covers with her patronage some Prince Charming of the bar, of engineering, or of medicine. Games of chance work greater and greater havoc. Races and speculations on the Stock Exchange engulf salaries, the savings and the wages of workmen, of people living on their incomes, of the rich and of the poor. The clubs where members and visitors are plundered with the same diligence are packed. Lottery tickets win prizes, and the governments themselves resort to them to restore the balance of their funds. The hope of winning the great and even the little prize is

as old as man, as his solid and lasting optimism, in spite of all the assaults of the ages. There is something pathetic in this faith in good fortune which animates the thousands of buyers of lottery tickets. The chance of winning is often less than that the earth will be plunged in the eternal abyss. And while the pessimistic hypothesis of perishing with the earth alarms only a few sincere souls, the less probable chance of winning a prize in the Turkish or Congo Belgian lotteries induces multitudes to sacrifice the money which, to many people, is as dear as their own ego.

XV. Who are the poets, the novelists, the philosophers that are free
from the pessimist poison? Their number is small. By the side of Plato, and to a certain extent Aristotle, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Leibnitz, perhaps we might find half a score of philosophers, poets, or writers who always speak of life with a just comprehension, therefore almost with love. So we do not cease to be tossed to and fro without advancing. Our masters hurry us toward the abyss. Yet we do not fall into it. Our souls, reared in contempt for life, ought to find delight in annihilation. We ought to curse the light and the heat of the sun. Nevertheless we bless them. Thus the attractions of life show themselves stronger than the calumnies they have been made to endure since the childhood of our minds. The ineradicable aspiration toward happiness laughs at all the combined efforts to strangle it. It lives within us, and we do not cease to live for its sake. The pessimist writers form the most amusing species. Why do they write? Is it for the human race which they detest? Is it for the fame which they seem, or rather which they ought, to despise? What is

fame? It is life in the imagination of our near or distant fellowcreatures, whom, moreover, we consider, almost always, as inferior to ourselves. But if we despise the reality of our own existence, how can we consistently love the imaginary one that is created by the caprices of chance? The renown of writers is probably of no more value than that of dead sovereigns. Their life in history has nothing in common with the one which they have really lived. Fame flatters and conceals beings who are often wholly unlike their labels. During our lifetime, she turns a deaf ear to us; after our death she neglects our deeds and our thoughts. She uses our names as a forged mark. We are almost always famous for acts which we have not done or for thoughts which are misinterpreted. Fame most frequently resembles a false paternity. Those who love life can console themselves for the hardship of its strange prolongation through fame. But what is to justify the thirst for celebrity among the eager lovers of non-existence?

XVI. The philosophers, the poets, and the moralists of nonexistence, when they attempt to make us share their views of nature and of man discover that they are flagrantly out of harmony with themselves. It is understood that they do not write for the benefit of human beings. The latter interest them very little. They are working solely for fame. But fame is one of the most futile things in life. Their existence being suspended from one of the most fragile branches of the tree, they give cause for laughter when we see them amusing themselves by cutting the trunk and destroying the roots. A genuine pessimist is logical only in suicide. Despoiled of all phraseology, what is pessimism? A theory, according to which nonexistence is of greater worth than existence. Then why labour, why

maintain the breath of our souls, why grieve, suffer, weep, and lament, why delay the deliverance of the non-existence? Optimism believes the contrary. The pleasures and the good things of life outweigh-the ugly, mournful, and defective ones. Finding life tolerable, it expects to render it still better. It installs itself on earth as a careful cultivator of earths blessings. Its belief justifies its life, and also justifies its troubles, its disappointments, its joys. Pessimism is inconsistent even as respects its motives for dissatisfaction. It mourns where it ought to rejoice. It weeps over the brief duration of life and bewails the possible disappearance of the sun. Logically it ought to rejoice that our existence is not too long, and that the extinction of the sun is threatened. But let us beware of accepting too literally the fears of these victims of spleen. Life is always long for all those who know how to utilise their existence. Moreover, we can live to be two hundred years old." Speaking physiologically, the human body possesses peerless solidity. Not one of the machines invented by man could resist for a single year the incessant taxes which we impose upon ours. Yet it continues to perform its functions notwithstanding. As for the sun, it is far from extinction. According to the calculations of Helmholtz, its diameter will diminish only one fortieth in 500,000 years! Millions of years between us and the disappearance of the heat which is indispensable to our life and to our plans! By that time, mankind will know how to accommodate itself to a new existence. Perhaps it will find in geothermy a means of transforming the earth into a hothouse that will suit our tastes and our appetites. Still, I cannot help thinking that this grief over what may

happen at the end of thousands or thousands of millions of years is infinitely comical.

XVII. The pessimist has too sensitive a soul. Threatening or

depressed, he is always out of temper. His facility of lamenting often places him in embarrassing situations. Yet he continues to shed tears, sometimes a few, sometimes in torrents. According to him, science itself is created only to dupe man. Tottering and uncertain, it gropes its way and makes no progress. A few scientific laws survive from the labour of so many ages. The pessimists of the twentieth century w^ould even be pleasantly surprised if they should learn that these few laws have proved erroneous. And while the principal beams of the building are creaking all along the line, the building itself nevertheless remains sound. The situation must be understood. The pessimists always seek things that cannot be found. Then they grieve because they have discovered nothing. Having enclosed nature within the narrow conceptions of their own brains, they bewail the spectacle of a world that scorns to follow them, and from the fear of finding their brains inadequate, declare it to be evil. Yes, the half dozen principles forming the substance of mathematical physics are now seriously compromised. Whether it is the principle of Newton or of Lavoisier"; the principle of Carnot of that of relativity; the principle of least resistance, or that of the conservation of energy; all these primordial strata of modern science are trembling upon their foundations. The sensation made by radium still echoes in our ears. We were so convinced of the infallibility of the principle of the conservation of energy that the discovery of Becquerel and of Curie at first found us incredulous. This radium, w^hich releases itself, is escaping energy. It

does not cease escaping, in spite of and contrary to the sacred law which commands energy not to scatter. We had the consolation of believing that it disappears in infinitesimal and intangible proportions. Ramsay has proved the contrary. What is to be concluded? That Mayers principle is false? That science has made an error? By no means. An explanation was immediately found. Radiations of an unknown nature fill space. Radium had the rare privilege of first collecting and then radiating them. After all, this is a plausible hypothesis. It answers every objection. It cannot be verified, and for that very reason, M. H. Poincare good-naturedly asserts, is irrefutable. For the great scientists are the last men"to be disturbed by the chances which befall their beloved science. They abandoned long ago the scholastic conception of the laws of nature. These laws no longer represent eternal and changeless harmonies. They express the steadfast relations which unite the two phenomena: that of the present and that of the future. The goal of science, of its laws and of its principles, is to foresee. But when these previsions prove baseless, she easily consoles herself; for neither she nor her laws claim to be infallible. What are the geometrical laws whose essence seems eternal? Laws of agreement. The mechanical principles, those fundamental bases of our philosophy of nature, possess no more value than the geometrical postulates. Probability forms a portion of all the physical sciences, as agreement forms the basis of the mathematical laws.

XVIII. It requires a special mentality to give ourselves up to

recriminations or fits of despair because Nature refuses to bend to our laws, the laws in which we desire to chain her. When experience deals a blow to one of the laws thus conceived, we modify, complete,

or abandon the law in question. And, while doing so, we do not forget that the law, thus reshaped, is nourished by the substance of the science of the past, as the future one will be nourished by the science of the present. Science endures, like the famous session of the Chamber of Deputies, which did not cease for an instant after the anarchist outrage. Science continues and develops. In this incessant march toward truth, which she ever approaches more closely, but which, perhaps, she will never succeed in possessing entirely, she collects her powers. The human race also draws from it confidence in her. This conflict is beautiful, fertile, and profitable. Yet, while the combatants and the spectators rejoice and profit by this magnificent spectacle, the pessimists continue morose and sad. Let us grieve for the pessimists.'

XIX. The progress of science, like industrial progress, leaves behind

it numerous ruins. But on these ruins grows a sumptuous plant, which covers the whole dreary surface with its young and beautiful clusters of flowers. Looking at it, we begin to hope and instinctively smile' at this more and more animated expression of the unity of nature, of the unity of her principles, replacing the infinite confusion of laws and of buried sciences. For heat, the vibrating solar messenger, as the great poetphilosopher Sully-Prudhomme has sung, is an eternal source of joy, of beauty, of energy, and of novelty.^ In proportion as we embrace more things, we refer them to one source. Light, electricity, magnetism, are to us the manifestation of a single power. Yet, in the past, bodies were divided into gaseous, liquid, or solid. We no longer think of this separation. The experiments of Andrew del Wals and so many others have

demonstrated the continuity existing between these three conditions. The sciences intersect one another. Under the system of reciprocal penetration, they are extending their frontiers. Sociology is becoming biological, as biology is becoming physiological, physiology embryogenic, or embryogeny anatomical. On the road of unity all the sciences meet, as do also all the principles which have been abandoned, denied, buried.

XX. A scientific law is found to ha\e been incorrect! Ten, one

hundred laws are erroneous! A good thing! The balance, if any remains, is turned into the common hoard. For the disappearance of discrowned laws is only the triumph of a single law, one that is general and divine: the unity of nature Can we grieve because theoretically we are moving toward the identity of forces or the sole force that is ruling and filling life? Finally, what is to be said of the admirable applications of science? Science has transformed, and continues to transform, the world. Let us hope that it will understand how to render happier earth^s principal tenant, man. The success of pessimism with the reader proves the immeasurable power of flattery. It also demonstrates the exaggerated importance that man attributes to himself. According to James Sully, the pessimist presents man as a fettered Prometheus, enduring tortures from the hand of a cruel Jupiter. And James Sully is right. This picture touches us. Pessimism slowly gains our confidence and our sympathy. The brain, flattered by the spectacle of the heroic tortures that have fallen to the lot of mortals, willingly lends its ear to the intoxicating melody of our suffering royalty. The success of the romantic extravagances is explained by the same reasons as that of

the pessimist poisons.

XXI. Would the world then be perfect? By no means. It is full of

troubles. But for the latter, life would lose its greatest charms. The hope in and the labour for progress are the fairest jewels of our intellectual and moral crown. Extinguish their lustre, and our fate will become desperately sad. Without pain there is no pleasure. Without sorrow there* is no happiness. Without imperfections there would be no perfect things. One would need to possess the ingenuousness of Rathsherr Brockes to seek to prove in nine volumes that everything in the world is for the best. The German philosopher plunges into raptures over the divine goodness, for has he not found in the scientific culinary arrangement of portions of the goose, the best proof that nature acts solely for the pleasure and satisfaction of man? No, nothing is arranged with a view to our happiness. The great All does not heed it. Nevertheless, life is beautiful and good, in spite of, or, if you prefer, on account of, the exertions in the struggle which she imposes upon us. An accurate view of life is indispensable. I will add that dissatisfaction is the essential condition of progress. But between a methodical criticism and the pessimistic doctrine, there is the difference which separates the man joyously tilling his land from the one who disparages in advance the future harvest. His discouragement paralyses his own efforts and enfeebles those of others. The limits of rational criticism are easily recognised. If these are passed, the result is a scorn of exertion, weakness of will, a settled coquetry with non-existence. This kind of sport, dangerous to individuals.becomes

disastrous to numbers. It sows despair, and reaps death.

XXII. Yet pessimism deserves some clemency. It must be expelled

with caresses, as we drive away the nightmares of children For pessimism, in its essence, is juvenile. We usually fall into its nets before the maturity of the mind. Before scaling the mountain we see only the rocks that bar the way. Before grasping the serene aspect of life, we perceive only the little dark corners. Age and experience almost always tear away the black bandage which pessimism places before our eyes. *To be pessimistic in feeling, said Goethe, we must be young.' This feeling was well-understood by Goethe, who in 1788 wrote' that he was not made for this world. Forty-two years later, he penned the touching confession (letter to Zelter), I am happy. He even wished, at this time, to live his life over again. Leopardi, Schopenhauer, and their fellows, converted somewhat late, fully agree with Goethe's opinion Many writers have died pessimists from not having reached the age of optimism. This should comfort the Werthers. The mere question of years often plays no part in it, but the wise experience of life counts largely.
^ Cahiers de Jeunesse.

We must, in all cases, distinguish between extreme pessimism and the melancholy, the sadness, or the solemnity of thought. The latter only colour thought with soft tints, but pessimism changes its nature. Just as physical happiness is a blending of pleasures and pains, scientific and philosophical serenity is composed of bitterness, discouragement, hope, and triumphs.

Without desiring to maintain with Priestley that the existence of the world will some day become akin to Paradise, we yet have the right to discount its future joyously. With the triimiph of the theory of evolution, the boundaries of our perfectibility recede endlessly. Our existence promises to be longer and happier. Sociology, founded upon the exact sciences, makes us hope for a reform of the world in harmony with our boldest dreams.

XXIII. Modern science has singularly humiliated the pride of the

pessimists. Their theory, she tells us, proceeds chiefly from their physiological inferiority. The ease or the difficulty of feeling pleasure, biology teaches, stands in direct relation to our organic functions. Normal life is easily imbued with agreeable sensations. Unhealthy organs, on the other hand, are refractory. Whoever possesses health, enjoys its delights and its perfumes. Those who are ill gather from the flora of life only faded flowers and dead leaves. The curious experiments of Dr. Charles Fere prove that individuals who are well present a potential maximum tension. Behind this technical law is concealed a whole world of facts and ideas. A well-balanced man is overflowing with life. He even adds from his own substance to the sensations received from without, and feels them in excess of their real importance. Degenerates, on the other hand, always feel less than the phenomena should call forth. Their powerlessness prevents them from placing themselves on the level of the external world. Ailing, they call the world to account because it does not harmonise with the lowering of their vitality. Among the abnormal individuals of all sorts from whom the professional pessimists are habitually recruited, and the world, there

is the same interchange of views as between a fool and a man of intellect. The latter vainly repeats his thoughts. The fool can neither understand him nor enjoy the charms of his conversation. He will even invariably interpret him at cross purposes. The incorrect comprehension, or the mistaken interpretation of the sensations of pleasure, as well as the incapacity for feeling it intensely, undoubtedly bears a large part in the extravagant pessimism of those who are disappointed in life. From the days of Buddha or Cakya-Mouni, passing through hundreds of schools, sects, or doctrines to end with Schopenhauer or Hartmann, it is always pleasure opposed to pain that constantly furnishes the arguments necessary to demonetise life. Hegesias of Cyrene was perhaps the most sincere of all the detractors of human existence. He started with the supreme worship of pleasures and, by discovering their rarity, he openly upheld the benefits of suicide. His master, Aristippus, as well as all the hedonists, appeared to forget that behind pleasure there is deceit, and behind voluptuousness, disenchantment. The history of this school incarnates the misfortunes of human happiness, when the attempt is made to found it upon pleasures and enjoyments. And while certain disciples of Aristippus, like Theodore, sought Happiness even in robbery and sacrilege, and were completely disappointed, Hegesias, having proved that the number of delights is less than the sources of pain, openly preached suicide. The prosperity of his fraternity of the dying compelled Ptolemy to close his school. Yet it decided nothing. The same result occurred in the case of all thedisciples of Aristippus, conscious or unconscious, who have succeeded one another in the philosophy and in the history of all the nations. Pleasure conceived as a simple enjoyment of life, can only

cause fatal disappointments. The axis must be changed. Instead of basing pleasure exclusively upon the physiology of the senses, it must be associated chiefly with spiritual needs. The solidarity of human beings elevated to altruism; our moral perfection having become the purpose of existence; the broadening of our existence, seeking to embrace all that deserves to be admired and loved,what a vast and infinite field for pleasure, constantly renewed and never exhausted! Add to this the moral health of the soul and the physical health of the body. The scale of pleasures, thus enlarged, can respond to the widest and most refined demands on happiness. Whether it be a Hobbes with his principle of sensations as a criterion of happiness, a La Met trie or a Buchner, reducing man to a simple mechanical expression, all offer behind their pleasures only the bitternesses which render existence odious. But change the essence of pleasure. In proportion as this basis is elevated, the happiness which it is supposed to nourish and support broadens and manifests itself as more beautiful and more enduring. It is enough to compare the disillusion of Cyreni- anism, under all its forms, with the serenity of a Bentham or of John Stuart Mill, to understand how far the idea of pleasure itself, more and more purified and ennobled, might be reconciled with a happiness that would be stable and permanent for all. The chief necessity is to make a breach between pleasure and luxury, its logical abuttal. For sadness, lassitude, and suffering are the three Fates who conceal themselves behind all voluptuousness. They deprive it of continuance and of the possibility of being completely satisfied. By covering with thick ashes a pleasure that has been experienced, the Fates do not even permit it to be prolonged by

memory. Each pleasure thus bears within itself disappointment, discouragement, and death. We can adapt ourselves to their existence only by modifying their substance. Salt, a beneficial condiment, would kill us if it should become the sole aliment of the organism. It is the same with pleasure and voluptuousness, which disturb both our souls and our bodies.

XXIV. Here is a pretty experiment that is easily performed. The

suggestion is made to a hypnotised woman that she cannot take a glass of champagne which is within her reach. She hesitates and feels embarrassed. By repeated movements she shows her intention of grasping the object of her desire. Then, finding it impossible to accomplish her wish, she heaps insults upon the champagne, declaring it to be dirty, poisonous, and obsolete. The wine inveighed against represents the world. Pessimism resembles this woman, who has lost the idea of the value and the advantages of the object that denies itself to her will and her comprehension.

IV. Among the Unfortunate

AIn the Kingdom of Envy

I. The ingenuity of man is chiefly manifest when he confronts his
distress. We see then what exceptional gifts our brains have scattered to increase and complicate sorrow. Like the divine Creator, man has formed a world out of nothing. It is in this way that Envy was born. What is Envy? Those who occasion it, as well as those who are its victims, are alike to be pitied. The human race, usually so disunited, seems on this point to be one and indivisible. In all latitudes we observe the same phenomenon: each member of mankind would believe himself dishonoured if he did not provoke around him the bitterness of envy. The savages who perforate their noses in order to put ornaments in them, the Indians of the Orinoco who, according to Humboldt, work for a fortnight to buy paint, the object of admiration of all their associates, the Africans in the escort of Captain Speke who paraded in their goatskin cloaks in fine weather and hid them, though shivering with cold, when the dampness and the water fell on their nude bodies, are so many prototypes of that passion for sowing envy which preys upon the noblest and the most degraded specimens of men and women. Our whole modern education is infected with the desire to appear, and not to be. Children are made to waste years of their lives in learning music, which they give up when they reach maturity, just

as they are dressed like monkeys to attract the attention of the passers-by. These principles, inculcated in childhood, pursue us throughout our lives. Herbert Spencer says that men who would blush if they were taxed with ignorance concerning the fabulous labours of a demi-god, would not show the slightest shame in confessing that they do not know the location of the Eustachian tubes, the functions of the spinal marrow, or the normal number of pulsations. To display ourselves and to arouse envy! This desire haimts us from childhood, when it is inculcated. Later it increases and accompanies us to and even after death, under the form of mausoleums and tombs, intended to make those who survive us exclaim enviously. Leaders of nations or plain street-sweepers, politicians or philosophers, scholars or poets, financiers or aristocrats, great artists or ordinary strolling players, great ladies or little seamstresses, women of serious or of light manners, all think solely of displaying insolently or discreetly their claims to envy. The author who relates the fabulous issues of his books; the lady of the great or the demi-world who boasts of her success with men; the politician who dazzles our eyes with his influence, or the financier with his millions; the physician or the lawyer who proclaims the amount of his income, are all acting under the domination of the same motive which urges a snob to attract attention in the front boxes or in a magnificent automobile. The object in life for the majority of men and women is nothing but the desire to create along their path the worst of the moral deformities of man, envy. The means vary, but the motive always remains hopelessly the same.

II. History proves that, in every age, envy has been the most
detestable factor in the march of human affairs. It is found at the bottom of all the great social and political revolutions. It has created more suffering than poverty. If the dominant classes had been able to resist the deceptive charms of envy, the progress of the world would have turned in a different direction. Those who take pleasure in creating envy cannot suspect its poisonous character. It humiliates, lowers, and sours natures. Once implanted in the soul, it takes possession of it as ill weeds grow in uncultivated soil, and stifles in its passage the development of the good seeds. The feelings of justice, of benevolence, of sympathy, perish in their contact like verdure in the sweep of the desert winds. Fatal to individual happiness, it is still more so to that of the community. For envy produces hatred which, in its turn, exasperates and paralyses the will. Moreover, it destroys all feeling of solidarity. The social struggle often flows from the real distress of the poor, but it is almost always based upon the moral blindness of the rich. The greater portion of our defects spring from envy, which leads to falsehood in life. . It creates also falsehood of words and of thought. The wish to inspire envy prevents us from being natural. At its approach, kindness departs. Mutually attacked by its multifarious venoms, men act toward one another like poisonous plants.

III. I once asked a famous psychologist, whose vocatio consists in

writing evil books, why he boasted of his fictitious success, when the real was sufficient for his glory. The potion of envy, which we make friends and enemies drink, he

replied, affords us delicious sensations. His colleagues, exasperated by his bragging, have succeeded, however, in diminishing his success and in ridiculing his fame. He is drinking the potion in his turn and he curses the fatal envy which, after having prompted him to pour poisons for others, now compels him to swallow them himself.

IV. Envy is a feeling of base essence. The fleeting satisfaction that it

bestows recalls the delicious tingling caused by certain deleterious drinks. It begins with a kiss of vanity and ends with genuine unhappiness. It is dangerous to excite the wild beasts encountered along our way. It is still more dangerous to exasperate the wicked beast that slumbers in the lower depths of the human mind. Those who are corroded by envy should think of those who are beneath them. When our souls are base enough or weak enough to suffer from the happinesswhich is often delusiveof others, we should seek consolation in thinking of the ill- fortune of those, often far more numerous, who are our inferiors. Our self-conceit always enables us to find these people. A pure and noble happiness borrows nothing from envy, quite the contrary. When encountered such happiness suffers from the meeting and even tries to hold aloof and never to cross envys pathway. Delicate souls are wounded by the vicinity of evil. We should blush to provoke envy, as we would blush to diffuse an odour that is harmful to the health of our neighbours. Ordinary souls rejoice at seeing envy born and grow around them. The unreflecting provoke it thoughtlessly. Really superior natures, through calculation or kindness, strive to kill it in the germ. When, against their will, it is encountered, they endeavour, since its

destruction is impossible, to soften its effects.

V. The desire to occasion envy is a morbid one, a sort of everrestless, never-satisfied neurosis. Those who can resist it are very rare. It appears under every form and affects every mind. Like the incorrigible coquette, who ends by looking in a fetching way at her own fingers, the vain person seeks to arouse envy among those who are dearest. The ancient Greeks often punished impious wishes. The famous Athenian orator, Demades, had a man who sold funeral goods sentenced because his trade compelled him to desire the death of his fellow-citizens. If the question now was to punish all whose business consists in diffusing hatred, the cities, suburbs, and country would be depopulated.

VI. A factory was in operation for half a century and had enriched
two generations. The founder and his son lived amid their workmen without wounding their sensitive feelings, and concealed their luxury by indulging in it at a homestead far from the centre of their business activity. Their heir, forgetting the prudence of his predecessors, built a magnificent palace beside the factory. The envy of the poor workmen closely followed the erection of the splendid structure. When the castle rose in the midst of the little houses, the evil feelings of the thousands of labourers filled the rich mans home. Alarmed, he then strove to turn aside their envy. But in vain. While comparing their life of poverty with the luxury of the manor, these simple souls were filled with an invincible rage, for it was caused by envy. Twice the factory was set on fire. Numerous strikes at last destroyed the

long prosperity of the business. One day the factory closed its doors and the castle, deserted, spread desolation around its walls, on which might have been engraved in black letters: Here lies Envy.

VII. When we consider the care with which the Government creates
and maintains envy, we might suppose that the point in question was a primordial virtue. The titles and the decorations which democratic governments themselves do not cease to multiply best prove how hard the human race toils to increase its troubles. This folly of the State is equalled only by that of good society or rich society, which amounts to the same thing. The latter ceaselessly complains of the hostility which comes to it from below and trembles at the threats of the god Demos. Yet it works solely to excite this hostility. From fear that the poor may be ignorant of the stupid use of the money of the rich, the latter proclaim it by every means at their disposal. A special news department undertakes to discuss their luxury. The smallest detail of their foolish or criminal egotism is repeated in millions of copies. This special department has, moreover, become universal. All the papers have their society column. Envy thus flows in a brimming stream. Men and women, urged by the unconquerable desire of creating it, mutually hurl into each others faces their relations, their country houses, their furniture, their horses, their automobiles, their teas, their dinners, their suppers, their lovers, their mistresses, their jewels. Young American women have displayed to reporters lace chemises, the cost of a single one of which would exceed the annual income of a working family of three persons.

The same morbid desire for publicity has crossed the ocean. The spectacle of young girls, creatures of graciousness and kindness, exhibiting their sumptuous wedding outfits, to poison by envy the atmosphere of the city, no longer shocks any one. In this mad chase toward the multiplication of envy, we forget her younger sister, hate, but the latter, ever growing and threatening, closely follows her companion.

VIII. One day, at a social reception, I had the misfortune of

scandalising those who were present. A naturalist, I said to the ladies glittering in all the brilliancy of their toilettes and their sparkling jewels, has just discovered a singular species of animal. Both males and females have only a single anxiety: to dazzle their neighbours. They make the most comical grimaces to show the superiority of their skin or of their muzzles. Intoxicated by these parade effects, some of them fall upon others, dealing numerous blows with their paws. Wounded and bleeding, they repeat the same performance; for the dominant characteristic of this animal is its endeavour to make itself envied by its associates, even at the cost of the great sufferings which are constantly occasioned. So they spend their lives in gratifying their vanity and suffering for it afterward. What is this animals name? I was asked in a general chorus. The society woman.

IX. Old Hesiod has already described the overflow of envy among his
countrymen. The potter envies the potter, the artisan the artisan, the poor even those who are poor, the musician the musician, and the poet the

poet. This evil is of such long standing that it appears almost innate. Yet let us not err concerning its character. It is an acquired evil. The child is not reached by its malign influence. The child is simple and natural. This is the explanation of the unutterable charm which certain little folks exert upon us After having breathed the vicious atmosphere of the desire to appear, we are enraptured by the sincere manifestations of childish dispositions. Their charm, as well as the attraction of their manners, is doubtless attributable to their naturalness. Pedagogy, the State, Society, do their best to uproot these natural virtues. Few are those who, by the power of will, succeed in resisting the faulty training. Few as they may be, their example proves the possibility of cure. It is at the same time little and much. Pedagogy some day will doubtless find that its duties are elsewhere. Instead of sowing envy, it ought to extirpate it from our souls. The task will not be easy. It will be necessary for pedagogy to reform its ideal, its programmes, its principles of emulation, its rewards. But the teacher who, in days to come, will be remunerated like an English judge and respected like a constitutional king, will be able to dispense with envy. He will eliminate from education the evil plant of which his own life will have been rid. Henceforth let us endeavour to cure ourselves. The effort required is trivial. It is a ticket in a lottery whose price is almost nothing, and yet is assured, as are all the other tickets, of drawing large rewards. To be rid of envy is almost the equivalent of being certain of happiness.

X. Ausonius was one of the happiest of men. Greatly admired by his

contemporaries, the most popular among the Gallo-Roman authors,

he attained the realisation of all his dreams. Rich and highly esteemed, he profited by a robust old age, which he enjoyed a long time. Elevated to the prefecture of the Gauls and to the consulate, adulated by the literary men of the period and pampered by fate, he possessed good fortune to a degree rare among human beings: he was conscious of his happiness. He could have desired nothing more. We are never rich enough, we are never famous enough, we never have enough talent or genius. But Ausonius declared himself fully satisfied with his destiny. It is while reflecting on his fathers life that the poet has succeeded in making for his own a philosophy imbued with a divine comprehension of existence. In his Ephemeris he utters these profound words of his father: I have always thought that happiness consisted not in having everything that we desire, but in not desiring what fate has not bestowed. Animated by this thought, Ausonius desired only the things within his reach. And all his life he asked of God only the favour of having nothing to covet. He died happy, for he died free from envy, and envy resembles the Egyptian brigands, the Philetes, who embraced their victims only to strangle them.

XI. The vain being whose life is spent in the desire to astonish or to
vex others, the person, in short, who lives for the opinion of the world, ceases to control his own life. And admire this inconsistency of human beings: we blush because we have lost our hair and wear a wig, yet we consider it perfectly normal to lose our souls and to live in the soul of our neighbours, of our friends, or even of that of men to whom we are wholly indifferent. Why place our happiness outside of ourselves? Why confide our

motives for living to the passing winds? Why seek our gratification in the annoyance and sorrow of others? We do not entrust money to the first person we meet, but we do confide to him the causes of our happiness. By making our joy in living depend upon the envy of others, we embark upon a very fragile boat. Its guidance escapes us and we are delivered over to chance, which is often cruel, almost always unjust.

XII. The envy which is shown possesses only the very brief
permanence of autumn clouds. It appears in a smiling guise and departs transformed into wrath, hatred, or vengeance. Almost always it becomes a desire to humiliate us in our turn. Envy is the wound which we inflict upon the souls of others. It bleeds visibly or invisibly, but it always remains a hurt. Perhaps it apparently had a just cause in the period when we lived under the principle of universal warfare. But now, when we are establishing among the peoples good-will and mutual respect, envy seems to belong to a barbaric age, and, in any case, is stupid. In the desire to create envy around us, we confide the happiness of our ego to others, thereby renouncing the principles dearest to our hearts. We renounce our individual life. But by scorning envy, by disdaining to propagate it about us, we enlarge our consciousness. Our intense life and it alone is realbroadens. It does not depend upon the imagination of others; it is ours, thoroughly our own possession. Without envy, life will perhaps appear to us less happy, but in reality it will be far more so.

B.The Benefits of Sorrow

I. On the pretext of pitying man, pessimism destroys his sources of
joy. It contemplates doing him still more injury. Does it not pretend to remove sorrow? Yet without sorrow, there is no pleasure, no happiness. According to Schopenhauer, his masters, and his pupils, joy, being negative, is of little importance. Sorrow alone being positive, is the reality. According to pessimist dogmas, the happiest man is he who goes through life with the minimum of sorrows, and not he to whose lot have fallen the noblest, the keenest, the greatest joys. The scomers of gladness rely first upon Aristotle. Has not the great positivist said: The wise man desires absence of sorrow and not pleasure {Nikomachean Ethics)} They also depend upon Voltaires affirming the exclusive reality of sorrow. The Stoics, the Cynics, millions of deluded philosophers and poets, hundreds of millions of Buddhists, vie with one another in claiming the reality of sorrow and the non-existence of pleasure, of gladness, and of enjoyments. And yet the earth does not cease revolving, and mortals do not cease enjoying its blessings. Yes, the earth turns and bears along in the same rush our pleasures, our joys, our sorrows, our sufferings. The positive or negative value of our sensations count for nothing. All form a portion of the same troop that accompanies life and lends it value. We scorn joys, and to an exaggerated degree calumniate sorrow. The latter is under the lash of a libel several millennia old. The report requires revision. The sufferings sorrow causes its elect

deprives their judgment of all serenity, and also robs them of all impartiality.

II. Can we condemn sorrow in its entirety? Must it be banished from

human existence? The counter-proof is offered. There is a class of human beings who are immune from sorrow. These are idiots, fools, and a certain category of lunatics. They feel many pleasures and remain insensible to sorrow. A fixed smile on their lips bears witness to the condition of their minds. They are sheltered from suffering. Are they happy? Or rather, who is the man of sound intelligence who would wish to accept their happiness? Here is another counter-proof. Science has placed within our reach the means of enjoying the kind of happiness so dear to pessimists. Suggestion affords a vaccine against physical or mental sorrow. Certain states of hypnosis permit us to be sensible only of bliss. Moral and physical stings no longer exert an influence. Our impressionability to agreeable sensations remaining intact, we banish from our life positive sorrows. Are we any happier in consequence? Those who desire to make us believe so lack sincerity; for, if they are really convinced of the benefits which the absence of sorrow would procure, they need only secure their safety through suggestion. This salvation is very easy to attain. It is accessible to all. Psycho-physiology teaches us that as a rule only idiots and lunatics remain rebellious to hypnosis and suggestion. The normal man, in certain conditions, invariably submits. Yet which of us would be willing to accept the happiness that is enjoyed by idiots, lunatics, or mediums in the state of hypnosis? Sorrow resembles the sufferings of maternity. Women undoubtedly complain of them, yet they receive them with tenderness, and water

them with tears of happiness. The suffering is blessed and ardently desired. By creating life, life finds itself renovated. Sorrow is similar. We fear, we shun, we execrate its coming. Nevertheless it does come, and on arriving, it gives value to the joy of the past, as it will also to that of the future. Moreover, happiness and joy live only through and often within it.

III. Like the ground which yields fruits only by being deeply stirred,
our soul requires the intervention of sorrow in order to give its full measure. Sorrow is the masculine, happiness is the feminine element. From their union spring thought, effort, energy, joy.When we strike the balance of our past, we perceive to what share of the profits sorrow contributes. It ennobles the soul, it forces it to reflection. During the constant march toward the future, it serves as a stopping-place. It purifies the soul and plays the part of the mirror which reflects its faults, its sins, its negligences. Sorrow also serves as a school, shows the soul the mistakes in the path pursued and reveals new ones. Our conscience grows through trial, says popular wisdom, and, by chance, popular wisdom is right. Consult the select few. Look through the biographies of the great dead or question the great men of our own times. All will tell you of the beneficent part played by sorrow in the formation of their characters. In the tears shed over their own troubles or over the troubles of their fellow-creatures, we find almost always the source of progress, as we discover in the sensibility of the poets the source of poetry.

IV. Nations are like individuals: they are spiritualised and made

greater by sorrow. We have praised and continue to praise the superior intelligence of the Jewish race. But this superiority is due solely to the persecutions and to the sufferings of the past. Modem times, in granting to the Jews, in certain countries, equality of rights, have at the same time deprived them of their recognised superiority. The descendants of the privileged race are retrograding in our eyes. With the complete levelling of their social and political inequality, the sources of their exceptional gifts will dry up. Parties which have been in opposition to the Government, when once in power, lose their worth. They are great in persecution, in struggle, in suffering. The party ruling France at the present day only recalls the fate of all minorities which have replaced the stifferings and advantages of conflict with the moral and mental decline produced in time by triumph. The suffering of our ancestors, like their happiness and their joy, enters into the composition of our souls. It forms a portion of our spiritual, as it does of our physical, health. We suffer from the excesses or enjoy the temperance of our forefathers. In the depth or the ingenuity of the mind of the son, there is often a large share of the suffering of the father, as in the weakening of his mind we find the unconscious and easy life of his ancestors. Even the vegetable kingdom lives and is regenerated under the lash of suffering. Horticulturists torture severely the flowers, which forget this pain in their happy lives. Herbaceous plants are deprived of water, and deep incisions are made in the bark of fruit trees. Who has not witnessed the spectacle of exhuming and torturing the roots of apple and pear-trees? Our peasants, more simple-minded, hack ban'en trees with hatchets. Renovated by the suffering, the trees produce fruit, the plants blossom, and the vines are covered with

grapes. We have said, and we do not cease to repeat it: evil is the condition of good, as sorrow is the condition of happiness. The origin of the most brilliant marvels of our civilisation is merely the desire to combat the annoyances of life. Writers who, in their love of paradoxes, have produced voluminous works to prove the virtues of the devil, of contagious diseases, or of famine, perhaps have not always been very far from the truth. Sorrow, when it does not destroy, strengthens. Its excess, like that of joy, puts an end to life. It is beneficial that it should form one of the elements of existence, but it must not be a substitute. It is like the poisons which, given in small doses, save the organism. To fortify the red globules of our blood, certain serums are injected. The dose must be regulated. Increase it, and you will destroy the supplies of life. To augment the fermentation of yeasts, fluorine of sodium is used. Put in too much, and the yeasts will be entirely destroyed.

V. Christianity has always practised a sort of coquetry in regard to

sorrow, a coquetry that is tender and touching. Blessed are those who mourn, says the Gospel. But Christian sorrow has been too invading, too obstructing. It did not complete existence, but strove to take its place. Stifled in its embrace, earthly life was evaporating, leaving to the believers only the mirage of heaven. Besides, it was an adulterated suffering, nourished by divine ecstasy and the hope of celestial rewards. Suffering thus became a morbid joy. The martyrs shed tears of delight, the fruit of unutterable pleasures. So long as men sincerely believed in Paradise, this metamorphosis of human sorrow into a divine bliss was possible. Modem scepticism, having blended with these celestial combinations, has destroyed their effect.

Deprived of faith, Christian sorrow has ceased to smile upon its followers and, since this has become laical, other reasons are required to work the charm. Above all, other causes are necessary to justify its existence. Superficial minds libel sorrow. Unsettled pessimists render it royal honours. But they banish it from the city and, with it, life. The truth rs to be found between these strange apologists and the furious destroyers. Since life undertakes a lavish distribution of troubles, it would be superfluous to seek to facilitate its task. For heavens sake, let us not increase the amount of suffering upon earth, far less create it needlessly. It exists, and will continue to exist. The philosopher should draw from it the best advantage. Let us not tremble in the presence of sorrow, for it rarely leaves us disarmed. The keenest anguish has only an ephemeral life. It is created by us, depends upon us, and lies within us. To be convinced of this fact, we need only see how^ sorrow^ acts. Some laugh at a blow to their vanity, others grieve over it. Financial losses cause terrible tremors in some of us, and leave others indifferent.

VI. We identify erroneously physiological and psychological

suffering, that of our body and that of our mind. The discovery of the nerves specially affected by sorrow, the dolorific nerves, thanks principally to the labours of M. Frey, no longer permits this confusion.*
*Here are some of the conclusions reached by M. Frey; There are two thresholds of the skin: one for the sensations of pressure, another for pain. The four cutaneous senses are re-duced to four categories of nervous, sensitive, etc., etc., terminations. See on this subject, among others. The Psycho-physiology of Pain, by Drs. Joteyko and Stefanovska.

And yet, there is a reciprocal and often decisive action of the phenomena of the mind upon those of the body. Moreover, as we have previously pointed out, the disenchantment and the sadness which degenerate into a sort of pessimistic melancholy, are most frequently due to the diminution of the vital energy. And as pain and sorrow mark the diminution, the joy of living and the upspringing of happiness signify the increase of energy, the health of the organism. By using special instruments, such as the plethysmograph of Hallion, the pneumograph of Marey, the sphygmometer of Cheron, and so many others which have come in fashion during these latter years, we have succeeded in proving experimentally that joy, sadness, and pain depend upon our energy. We feel pain when the energy of one of our faculties finds it impossible to move freely. In the contrary case we experience pleasure, joy. Joy, modem physiologists tell us, is the consciousness of the circulation, which is acting easily in the nervous centres. Let us observe more closely the birth of a physical pain. When a mans arm is cut off, what happens? The cells of the injured member can no longer exercise their function. Their energy is restrained and paralysed. The inflammations or attacks of fever serve as a way by which the deranged energy escapes. And the organism suffers in proportion to the greater violence of the injury. But let the accident be spread over a longer period of time, let the organism adapt itself to the change, let the energy of the cells shift during the interval, and the suffering will proportionally diminish. This is the reason why chronic diseases and the most radical, but

extremely slow changes which take place in our organism, cause only slight pain. The same rule applies in the moral domain. We must keep in reserve the power of our souls. Thanks to its influence, sufferings and sorrows assume salutary forms. These sorrows will circulate freely through our minds, like the sensations of physical pain that flow without suffering through the nervous centres. For moral or physical pangs can do nothing but retreat before the intense energy of our souls and of our bodies.

VII. The belief in moral suffering existing in itself resembles the

barbaric superstition relative to fire. Candid minds regard it as a quality inherent in wood or in coal. The same illusion of our senses which makes us believe in the sweetness hidden in each bit of sugar, or in the bitterness of quinine, inspires the idea that sadness and pain are found in the phenomena which precede them. Yet an examination of the physical pain which is most susceptible to analysis is sufficient to enable us to perceive our error. A blow from a club which will strike down a dog is scarcely felt by an elephant. The same operation which makes a person of sensitive intellect faint, leaves an idiot unmoved. The same light which blinds a diseased eye is pleasant to a sound one. Human flesh, an object of horror to civilised men, is the delight of cannibals. Certain vices which are repulsive and unimaginable to so many men, are the source of rapture in others. Consequently, pain, as well as pleasure, is to be found neither in the rays of the sun, nor in human flesh, nor in vice. They are within ourselves. The pedagogy of the will easily succeeds in increasing or diminishing their intensity. It will even reach the point of creating or

destroying them, at the pleasure of its interests. The comprehension of certain sorrows would be equivalent to their diminution, if not to their destruction. Let us take the deepest, occasioned by implacable death, and try to reason concerning them. Standing beside the tomb of a friend, we forget the moments spent together. Yet the sweet feelings bequeathed by the dead remain as an inviolable inheritance. We forget the past as a source of joys, to think only of the future, which is not always smiling. Spiritualists or realists do not remember that in their tears floats transparently a fierce selfishness. In the thought what will become of us after the affection is snatched away, there is no room for the departed. We forget his pains, his sufferings, his maladies, which have rendered the deliverance desirable to him, to think only of our own pleasures or injured interests. Let us broaden this observation and strive to make it enter our consciousness. Nor must we lose sight of the interests of those who have gone. Our softened egotism will then find means to solace the suffering of those who despair at the sight of those who are passing. And yet this is the greatest and the most irreparable of all our sorrows.

VIII. Pain, in its essence, is eternal. It pursues because it is united

with our happiness. It is the reverse of the medal of life. The question is not to know how to destroy it, but how to draw from it strength and beneficent instruction; for this asserted poison contains treasures of honey. Yet there must not be too much. The instinctive aim of the individual is to diminish the dose. This is also the object of progress in matters concerning the whole race. So let us be reconciled to sorrow. Without it, life would not be

complete. It is a little like the Paschal lamb, which, according to the Bible, must be eaten with bitter herbs. What a delightful intimation that, without bitterness, there is no joy. Pain is, moreover, our teacher of energy. Pleasure enervates. Joy, long continued, exhausts us. Sorrow strengthens. It often acts like the shower-bath administered to neurasthenics. They shriek while receiving it, yet they emerge from it rejuvenated and regenerated.

C.Prejudice of Wealth I.The belief in happiness through the possession of riches resembles
the tradition so widely diffused in the Middle Ages, of the iey caresses of the devil. All the women accused of witchcraft were of one mind in their confessions. The evenings spent with Beelzebub lacked charm. His embraces had a deadly chill. These complaints are heard from all who passed a night with Satan. He was handsome and irresistible, but his kisses froze them with terror. Wealth procures happiness, sincere souls declare, and they are believed. The affirmation is repeated as proof itself. All are convinced of it, as the women beloved by the devil were convinced of the chill of his kisses.

II. The wisdom of the nations contains valuable instruction

concerning the futility of riches. Ancient thought and modern ideas agree on this point.And the religions do not contradict the philosophers. The same sounds of the bell reach us from every direction. Distrust wealth! Distrust a luxurious life. The wisest and most brilliant of kings, Solomon, a royal expert on the subject, he who, by his own confession, had undertaken to study the value of all things under the sun, thus sums up his experience : I gathered me also silver and gold and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men. I had great possessions above all that were in Jerusalem before me. And, after having weighed the happiness he had obtained from his riches and his pleasures, the great Solomon perceived that all was vanity and vexation of spirit.

*Ecclesiastes, Chapter II; 8 and following.

Nature, a peerless teacher when we listen to and follow her commands, shows us that the heights of things endure most easily the vicissitudes of fate. Horace has eloquently translated this in his verses. The lofty oak, he says, is most frequently beaten by the storm; tall towers crumble with the greatest noise. And it is the peaks of the mountains which are struck by the thunderbolt." When literature desires to describe happy people, it withdraws them from the throng, deprives them of great riches, great honours, great companies. It even wrests from them fame. The idyl, the poetic form which monopolises the happiness of its heroes, paints them in very humble conditions. Poverty suits its favourites, as beauty patches harmonise with certain faces. The voices of philosophers, prophets, or writers, from whatever direction they may come, from the North or from the South, from the West or from the East, echo with the same exasperating monotony: Man, rely solely upon thyself. Neglect riches and enjoy the kingdom of thy own personality.** Why is it that the instruction of the prophets, philosophers, poets, writers, and thinkers should have glided over the souls of human beings like water over rock?
* Feriuntque summosjulmina montes (Horace, Odes, I, ii, 10.)

What Is Seen

III. Poverty and humble life, we are told, narrow the intellect, which

dwindles and disappears. Deprived of wide horizons, of the throngs of men, and the splendours of life, the intellect dies as do flowers in deserted gardens.

What Is Not Seen A wasted life, which is the condition imposed by society, destroys the good qualities of man, and makes the evil ones triumph. His intelligence, it is true, sparkles with glaring colours, but its development is merely artificial, and resembles the double blossoms whose beauty is produced by the transformation of stamens into petals and which become sterile.

IV. Seated at a round table once used by Louis XIV, in armchairs

classed as among the most authentic of the ancient ones of Beauvais, surrounded by pictures of the masters of the Renaissance, we were talking together. The drawing-room we occupied is considered the handsomest and the most costly in Paris, and represents in itself the value of a small provincial city. My host, whose name stands for happiness and wealth, smiled mournfully when he heard my question: Are you happy? Very happy in the opinion of others. But what constitutes happiness? If it is a series of pleasures and gratifications, I very rarely experience any of these. Everything yields or appears to yield before the power of our wealth. Disappointments cause us annoyance as they do other people, but we are not delighted by success. The increase of our richesfor is it not said that we are constantly

increasing them?cleaves us indifferent, for we well know their part in our happiness. But the acquisition of these treasures of art for which all connoisseurs envy you? They undoubtedly afford intense delightto the man who sells them to me. Then, after a little hesitation, my host continued : There is one rare joy that very wealthy people experience almost never. It is labour crowned with success, a goal attained after the efforts of long years. We lack, in short, that which gives life its zest: its troubles, its difficulties. I do not mention the sorrows with which the playwrights and novelists load us, the impossibility of finding along our path of life disinterested feelings. Is not your case exceptional? Look around me. See the members of my family, who are so generally envied. Examine their colourless existence, their hopeless melancholy, the lowering of their energy, and you will behold the wrong side of time-honoured wealth. On that day I had the effrontery to pity the richest man in Paris.

V. Life is dear to us. What is life without our personality? Yet one of
the essential conditions of a broad existence is the abnegation of the individual treasure. When we no longer make our happiness depend upon our own will, we make it depend upon the will of others. Wealth bestows many fictitious pleasures. On the other hand, it deprives us of the only real blessings which man can enjoy on earth: the independence of personality, and the free expansion of our Ego. The general belief maintains precisely the oppositea mere optical

illusion. We must distinguish between the abstract power of money and the use of wealth. Those who wish to enjoy their fortune depend principally upon Society, where they exercise their functions as rich men. Their sovereignty resembles that of the constitutional deputies. Fleeting masters, their authority is composed of the good-will of those whom they command. They maintain themselves on the surface only by sacrificing everything which constitutes the real value of the man. They sacrifice the royalty of their minds to receive in exchange the vitiated incense of homage. And these pass by happiness. The feelings created by the inner life, which is the only one compatible with the simple life, are of a rarer, because purer, essence. From all the heights of human thought comes to us the same love of the secluded, modest life, the life of the mind, the life almost seeking solitude. All those who have wished to enjoy on earth the heavenly life, Giordano Bruno confesses, have said with one voice: I fied, and have remained in solitude. La Bruy ere even goes so far as to tell us that all our misfortune proceeds from our inability to remain alone. There are small tempests, says Balzac," which develop in souls as much passion as would be required to direct the greatest social interests.
^ Le Cure de Tours . . .AbbTrouberts hours flowed on rapturously, flitted by with thoughts as delightful, were ruffled by hopes and sorrows as profound as could be those of the ambitious aspirant, of the gambler, of the lover . . .

The life of Emily Bronte, which was spent in a little village isolated

from the world, reflects more thought, energy, passion, and adventures than would have been required to animate and supply half a score of Octave Feuillets or Paul Bourgets heroines. We ought to love solitude. We should then more fully realise the value of human individuality. Wealth would have less hold upon our imagination, and we should understand that the sacrifices which are often necessary to acquire it do not correspond with the advantages at its command. We should also comprehend that nature exacts too great a payment for the illusive advantages of fortune. We should regard wealth with less envy and its beneficiaries with more sympathy. The poor, when rid of envy, would be as rich as the most opulent in the world.

VI. The negroes, when emancipated from their long slavery, shed
tears of love upon their ancient fetters. When we speak of destroying the worship of wealth, even those who have most to gain by it rebel angrily. I can see shocked economists and sociologists treat me as an ignoramus, even as an anarchist. But who, in our times, is not an economist? Yet certain very wellbalanced sociologists do not fear to denounce the homage lavished upon wealth as the principal source of the malpractices of modern commerce. Herbert Spencer accuses the public who kneel before wealth, of being guilty of all the crimes committed by the merchants.* You would have difficulty, he says, in finding a man who would not treat with more civility a rascal clad in fine cloth than a knave in fustian. Matters are growing worse. Society always treats with more respect a very wealthy thief than a very poor honest man. A reaction has become necessary. This struggle against the god

Mammon offers chances of success. It is enough to see what the initiative of one mans energy has been able to accomplish in this direction. President Roosevelt, by attacking dishonest millionaires in a country where wealth takes the place of rank, of traditions, and of all other honours, has shown the fragility of its worship. When the crimes of the poor and of the rich shall be placed on the same level; when indirect robbery and murder, often covered by the name of speculation or of monopoly, shall be compared with direct crimes, the religion of the god Million will be humiliated to a degree from which it will be difficult to recover.

*First Principles: Commercial Morals. VII. We no longer possess wealth. Wealth possesses us. Its impious
and degrading worship has nothing in common with the respect due to its beneficent action. We should use a power without falling into idolatry. When wealth has again become a mere instrument, humanity will draw from it all that it is capable of bestowing. The point in question is not to despise money. We do not scorn any instrument, but we do without one which is not within our reach. In this conflict between happiness and human dignity on the one hand and money on the other, the victory will remain with the dignity of man. In proportion as the latter progressesand it would be difficult to demonstrate that it alone should not progresswe shall understand how dishonouring it is to men to see themselves classed according to the number of coins assigned them. Who is the poor man? Who is the rich man? A multi-millionaire reduced to only a few millions would doubtless be very poor. A

pauper unexpectedly receiving a thousand-franc note would consider himself rich. Everything depends upon the angle at which we place ourselves to consider poverty or its antipode, wealth. The triteness of this thought is universally recognised. It has been voiced and repeated in every tone. We even take the trouble to recall it to friends who are in distress. Yet we lack the strength of soul to apply it to ourselves. We destroy our health by fretting because we do not have at our disposal all that the rich possess, and we add to regrets envy, which is like quenching thirst by eating salt. But what is the happiness of the rich, what is the happiness of the poor? We admire wealth, as Bengal light is often admired. Blinded, we do not even wait for the dying of the sparks, and we go away under the delusion of having seen a genuine fire of diamonds. But let us permit the spectacle to go on to the close. Let us consider the rich. Let us weigh the sum of their asserted happiness. Let us regard them without the blinding glare that wealth imparts. Let us observe, especially, the inhabitants of the countries of gold and gems. In what respect is their destiny better? Lucretius justly asked: Does the burning fever leave thy limbs more quickly when they writhe upon embroidered stuffs blazing with crimson, than when sleep must come upon the coarse couch 10of the common people? And since neither treasures nor nobility, nor the glory of the diadem benefit the body, we must believe that these superfluous advantages are no less useless to the soul. What a profound book yet remains to be written under the title: The Troubles of Wealth. The rich man is neither more intelligent, nor more virtuous, nor more healthy , than the poor one. Nor is his chance of becoming famous greater than the poor mans. History even asserts the

contrary. The illustrious men, the great conquerors in science, literature, or politics are chiefly recruited among people in modest circumstances. Apuleius justly says that all those who command our admiration by their glory have been nourished from the cradle by poverty. Poverty, he tells us, in the early ages, has been seen founding cities, inventing arts, holding vice aloof, lavishing fame, deserving the eulogies of all the nations. We have beheld it in Greece become by turns justice in Aristides, goodness in Phocion, courage in Epaminondas, wisdom in Socrates, eloquence in Homer. In Rome, it witnessed the beginning of the Roman empire. Serenity of mind is the condition of our happiness. Now, from this standpoint, no one is more miserable than a rich man, says Bacon. He has little to desire and much to fear. Health is the most appreciable of all our benefits. But, if the rich man desires to keep well, remarks Sir Richard Temple, he must live like a poor man. Everywhere and always poverty was the privileged soil where grew the noblest and highest human plants. Poets or scientists, artists or leaders of the peoples, all owe to it the most beautiful of the moral qualities which have created their personalities, maintained them, and made them triumph.

VIII. Poverty must be distinguished from pauperism. The second

begins with the privation of things necessary to existence, while the former, after all, is only the condition of modest living. The poverty which permits us to lead a free existence has nothing in common with the depressing yoke of pauperism. Their demarcation, theoretically impossible, is only the result of the concrete circumstances of life. Ordinarily a man who can feed and maintain his family and secure them the possibility of developing freely, is not

a destitute person. Below this limit begins pauperism, one of the most serious anxieties of modern government. Absolute equality before the law has, as its corollary, mitigated equality in life. The unfortunate strugglers must be assured the bread necessary for their bodies and the intellectual nourishment required for their souls. The emancipation of the destitute is forced upon and is sought in all countries. All men cannot be made rich. The poor will continue to exist. There will be poor men, because there will be rich ones. But we are poor only by comparison with those who have more than we possess. Absolute equality, perhaps, will never exist except in the brains of incorrigible Utopians or of demagogues jeering at their neighbours. The most certain thing is that, in the society of the future, with its obligatory pensions for the aged, the unemployed, and the infirm, with the free schools and the abolition of privileges, there will doubtless no longer be destitute persons in the true meaning of the word. The case of the poor, that is, of persons deprived of fortune, though having an assured living, will undoubtedly persist. But this poverty will no longer have the same severity. Above all, it will no longer have the stamp of organic infirmity which it possesses in our times. The definition of poor, so difficult from the material, is easy from the moral standpoint. Whoever desires things that are inaccessible is poor, whoever has all that he desires is rich. Therefore the richest man would be the one who wishes for nothing that he lacks. Emilianus, cries a Roman writer, if you want to make me a poor man, you must first prove my cupidity. For what is cupidity? Intense and multiple desire. But whoever desires much, lacks much, and thus becomes a man who is very poor and worthy of compassion, while the man who wants only

what he can obtain, possesses rare opulence. To command inexhaustible resources is nothing. The important point is not to have desires that surpass our resources. A wealthy man told me, with deep sadness, of his shattered health, which no longer permitted him to enjoy the pleasures of the table. He was very much distressed. But think, I said to him, of the enjoyment a glass of cool, pure water bestows. Put yourself frequently n a condition of extreme thirst and compare your impressions. A few months later I saw him again, and he admitted that the water of the poor, when we know how to enjoy it, is worth more than all the choice liquors of the wealthy. It is the same with all the objects of our covetousness.

IX. I read one day a story that greatly impressed me. Crates,
renowned among the principal citizens of Thebes for his wealth and his nobility, made a gift to the people of his entire riches. He preferred a simple staff to all his fruit trees; he exchanged the most magnificent country houses for a wallet. Crates praised the latter in verses imitated from the passage in which Homer lauds the island of Crete: Surrounded by this luxury and by these heaps of gold, I my wallet as my city and dearest treasure hold. How many like Crates do we not find in the history of all the nations? An anthology of the sensible people who, after having experienced the painful burden of wealth, have devoted it to the benefit of their fellow-citizens, would deserve to be published at the expense of a

friend of humanity. Certain truths, however, are like temperature. We must become accustomed to them, otherwise we shall find them too far above or too far below our minds. There are some moral truths which appear almost inaccessible to man. Our will rejects them, reason condemns them, our hearts turn from them. Thus no one will consent to discuss the antinomy^ which separates wealth and happiness. The possibility of such a discussion offends our good sense. The mistake lies in the erroneous suggestions which we have endured from childhood.

X. The glittering happiness of the rich recalls the simiptuous

appearance of certain plants. Covered with a riot of leaves, stems, tubers, shoots, they attract and charm our eyes. A superficial observer pauses before them, dazzled. His ignorance conceals from him the drawbacks of their existence. He does not know that they rarely blossom. Neither is he aware that when they do succeed in flowering, they do not produce seeds. The worship of wealth dates, probably, from the first modification which occurred in the means of exchange among the men of the Stone Age. Always revered, almost never opposed, wealth has among its most fervent worshippers many religions and their priests, the civil power and its upholders, soldiers, philosophers, and writers. There was a time in Rome and in ancient Egypt, when the philosophers, like the women of our day, took little dogs to walk, after having taught their mistresses contempt for wealth. . . . Doubtless their lessons did not change the face of affairs. The religion of gold is the oldest institution in the world. Its reign, a very permanent one, seems the most solid of them all. While every

belief has varied, the dogma of beneficial gold has remained immutable. Shall we ever succeed in changing it? I am sure of the fact. To doubt it, we should be compelled to admit that it constitutes an organic necessity of the body or of the soul. But the matter concerns only a superstition. We nourish it with our best resources and lavish upon it everything: strength, vitality, and mysterious virtues. Cease feeding it, and it will cease to live. For a long period chemists confounded and studied under the same name of didymium, two different bodies, now known as neodymium and praseodymium. Perhaps at no very distant day, we shall separate in an equally decisive manner wealth and happiness. There are men bom and reared in opulence, as many plants are grown in a rich soil. The agave {vivipara), when cultivated in ground that is too fertile, produces only bulbs, but no seeds. Many plants perish under the influence of this apparent advantage. There are undoubtedly many rich people who suffer from the same fate.

XI. Each one of us possesses one source of unknown wealth: habit.

This enables us to accommodate ourselves to everything, including ungratified necessities. But wealth is not a necessity. At most it is an irrational desire. Mankind often employs many centuries in acquiring essential truths. But conviction once attained, it strives to overtake lost time. The equality of men before the law is only a hundred years old, yet what has not been done in its name! It will be the same in the case of wealth as in the case of the declaration of the rights of man, or of the excesses of war. A day will come when the governments will put forth as many efforts to

establish the reign of peace as they have done to maintain war. Then peace will triumph. A day will also come when we shall perceive all the evil which modem institutions are perpetrating to maintain the worship of wealth, and its worship will end. While awaiting this delightful moment, let us marvel at the means of domination which we lend to riches. From our earliest youth, the endeavour is made to bend our knees before the Golden Calf. Teachers show a sort of esteem for wealthy pupils. The poor ones can only imitate them. Newspapers and books laud rich men; novelists confer upon them the dignity of heroes, as the Government bestows titles of honour. The churches reserve privileged places, the places of benefactors, of demi-angels, if not of demi-gods. Women, nurtured by the same suggestion, fall even more easily under the spell of their gilded charms. Wealth, thus flattered, diffuses in its turn an intoxicating fragrance. Its dazzling light conceals from us even its coarsest blemishes. In its behalf, we forget even the precepts of the Decalogue. It purifies robbery and murder. The magic of the million renders riches invincible, for it crushes all resistance. As in the tale of the Chronicle of Nuremberg, we all seem dragged along by the Dance of Death. And, like those impious men and women of Darmstadt, we are all engulfed in the abyss which we open by our wild dance around the god Million. The ancient Egyptians gave to their deities the heads of animals. Our contemporaries often bestow upon gold-covered brutes the attributes of divinity.

XII. Wealth is often only a word. There are people called rich who
occupy toward their treasures the same position that a French beggar holds in regard to our immense national fortune. To enjoy life, the

first necessity is to live; to be rich, we must possess wealth. But we are frequently the slaves of wealth; we are its chattels, but the wealth is not ours. Few are the men who domi- nate it, who dictate to it their laws, their orders, their wishes, in short, who are its possessors. The most intelligent among them frequently call to mind the magnificence of the embalmed body of Saint Charles Borromeo. According to Ruskin, the saint rests in the transept of the Milan cathedral. He holds a gold crozier and bears upon his breast an emerald cross of priceless value. But is Saint Borromeo rich.^ No, we shall be answered, for a dead body or a lifeless soul cannot possess wealth. How many are the rich whose souls are dead, and whose bodies are powerless to enjoy fortune!

XIII. The evils caused by the worship of Mammon have never been
estimated, perhaps because they are incalculable. In this deification of wealth we are deifying, like certain Pagans, the very gods who load us with their woes. Through both worlds a general complaint of the adulteration of foods is now ringing. Civilised nations are consuming adulterated products and lavish their esteem on the very ones that impair their health. Through the monopoly of articles of prime necessity, a conspiracy of speculators is striving to render these articles less accessible to the community. We feel the danger, but we do not cease admiring the evil-doers. Must we then teach contempt for wealth? No. The abolition of its excessive worship will suffice. We should save, by the same opportunity, its numerous disciples and, above all, its innumerable victims. The latter adore and love it solely for itself. They waste their lives in imploring its favours and end with having sacrificed everything to it without often obtaining anything in return.

If wealth were a deity conscious, in its cruelty, it could pursue no different course. It takes from its followers everything: efforts, time, mind, life, and in return gives to them only immoderate and insatiable longings. Let us imagine a Utopian school in which the endeavour would be to imbue young minds, not with contempt for wealth, but a sensible comprehension of its merits. The pupils should be shown that wealth and happiness, as well as fame, greatness of soul, or worth, are rarely found on the same path, and it should then be proved that goodness, the soul's inestimable treasure, will obtain for its possessor a happiness that wealth is not in a position to bestow. The pupils should also be taught that true wealth lies solely in spiritual independence. This renders us great and strong, and it is the only fortune which raises us above other men. Once obtained, it is no longer subject to the vicissitudes of vulgar wealth. With it, we dominate the rich and are dominated by no one. Thanks to it, we can satisfy our every desire, for, subjugated, our desires remain under our power. They come only when called by the voice of the soul, and the latter, in satisfying them, finds a celestial joy. Wealth makes us descend to the level of slaves. Never does it satisfy us. Like the ocean, it absorbs everything and restores nothing. It creates uneasiness, dissatisfaction, and gives to its elect an unquenchable thirst. Let us remain always in Utopia. Suppose that parents, in furtherance of the instruction of the teachers, constantly reiterate the same ideas. Who would dare to doubt that the young human beings, thus transformed, would not be better able to resist the malign influences of life? The worship of wealth, at the end of half a score of generations hardened against its solvent power, would cease to

corrupt our souls.

V. Happiness for All

A.Happiness through Goodness I. If a conscious principle had presided over the creation of man, it
must have pursued this course of reasoning: The feeble creature which, in developing, will become man, will be exposed to every peril. He will suffer from contact with his fellowcreatures. Envy and wickedness will cause him numberless pangs. In the struggle for life, the weak will be crushed by the strong. A prey to constant discouragements, man will lose faith in the future. He will need a companion to brighten his life with the softest rays. He needs a warm hearthstone to vivify his depressed mind. And man received, on this occasion, the gift of a beneficent power. The tireless partner of his joys and of his sorrows, this gift never abandons him. Child and adult, mature or aged man, all profit by its heavenly action. Mankind owes to it the better portion of its past and of its present. Everything even leads to the belief that the future will owe it still more than have former years. Yet we have never ceased to slander its deeds, to scoff at its motives, to ridicule its efforts. It should have left man. Abandoning him to his fate would have been only an act of justice. But it preferred to remain with him, for it is Goodness.

II. We frequently resemble those tribes of Central Africa that pride

themselves upon possessing bits of broken glass, empty bottles, or articles of ordinary hardware. On the other hand, they set no value

on priceless pieces of ivory or on precious stones. Accessible to all. Goodness, in its germ, exists in all men. Like the sun, it contains an inexhaustible energy. Like the sim, it shines for the entire world. It bestows royalty upon the humblest human being. Set in action, it adorns the soul in which it grows. It does more; it revives all by whom it is obtained. When goodness takes possession of a heart, it makes it a queen of queens, but its sovereignty is discreet. It remains hidden, like that of all the best rulers. Yet to come within its reach is enough to make us feel the divine mercy which pervades the space in which it shines. In the midst of an iey night, the wearied traveller perceives a simple house. The light from its windows, the heat that comes from this abode of men, fills his heart with delight. A sense of comfort enters his soul, even before he could have approached the distant dwelling. He only surmises that he sees before him the refuge of goodness, and a joyous hope fills his heart.

III. Genius visits rare beings. Wealth often chooses its elect as a gold
coin falls unexpectedly on a dung-hill. Birth lavishes its privileges with the blindness of chance. Goodness alone extends its brotherly arms to every human being. It makes no distinction between the lofty and the lowly, between religions, sexes, ages, the poor or the rich, the men of talent or of genius. All may practise its worship. The most destitute or the most unfortunate man preserves the privilege of being good and of exercising goodness. It holds its followers, no matter whence they come, equally dear.

IV. Miracle of miracles! We lavish goodness outside, and it increases

within our souls. Lodged in the heart, goodness pervades it entirely. The soul, in its turn, then dispenses a fragrance of rare quality. The sight of goodness renders faces serene. It lavishes strength upon the weak, hope on the despairing. A little portion of goodness, like the bread of the Gospel, is enough to appease the hunger of a multitude. Acting like Providence, goodness creates much from nothing. The rays diffused by it, in returning to their source, bear the sweetness collected along the way. Thus we create blessing around us, and fill our own hearts with the divine essence.

V. Genius needs to be admired. Talent requires to be recognised.

Wealth desires to be envied, and also demands homage, the only token of its importance. Goodness exacts nothing from any one, finding its recompense in its own royalty. The question: How to be happy often resolves itself into: how are we to exercise goodness? Real happiness is the joy brought by the benefit on returning to the soul of the benefactor. True goodness remains conscious of itself. As lightning, however swift it may be, contains heat, the most spontaneous act of goodness bears portions of our hearts. This is its natural fireside, and also the spring by which it is ennobled and purified. It gives it the sanction of its own superiority. Goodness which remains outside of our conscience is only an act of unreflecting and irrational weakness. It marks the disorder and not the harmony of our souls. Like a well-regulated weapon, goodness does not flash without a cause. Exercised blindly, it may create some benefit, but its action also produces misfortune; it may aid the strong against the weak; it abases the humble and passes suffering misery

with indifference. Plutarch relates that the inhabitants of Asia Minor were reduced to slavery for the sole reason that they did not know how to say; No. A sad example of the effects of goodness through weakness. Goodness which is really worthy of the name is always sensible.

VI. We say innate goodness, but it is chiefly acquired. It grows and

perishes in our consciences. Divine in its beauty, goodness nevertheless remains human. It would be necessary to introduce it into souls where it is lacking, and it would require developing where it is only a germ. It would need directing toward worthy subjects, and it would also need to be turned away from things which would make it lose its dignity. A course of goodness in the high schools for the practice of youthful minds! The idea seems paradoxical. The paradox is often only a truth of the future. Let us wish it to triumph. Above all, let us wish that it may find enlightened masters working for the salvation, through goodness, of youthful souls. A Pestalozzi of goodness! Perhaps this mysterious being is growing up somewhere. He will guide and develop childish goodness as certain wise instructors understand how to direct toward beneficent destinies the sons of sovereigns who are confided to their charge. Some day courses of goodness will be established, whose lessons will have attractive foundations. Surrounded by irresistible charms, goodness will lead the souls of children through flowery paths. It will be, perhaps, the most charming of all the sciences of youth, and it will also be the most useful to its happiness and to that of the community. Thanks to it, the pupil would follow the most delightful paths of life. When, from the earliest childhood, their charms have been

demonstrated to him, he will desire to follow them in later years. He will seek and will find in them the loftiest reasons for happiness. Emulation in the domain of goodness will be the most noble and the most fruitful of rivalries. How many subjects can be brought into these lectures upon goodness! They will be as varied as life itself. The art of obliging our neighbour would play the dominant part, but how many are the imperceptible shades in the way of rendering service! Gratitude, in its turn, presents infinite aspects. The fetters which bind men together have numerous links. These lectures upon goodness would bring out unity, charm, and beauty. By teaching us to know them, this section of the Science of Happiness will render them more widely known and loved.

VII. Goodness draws after it love, as the sun brings fair weather. We
love better those to whom we have rendered service, and we render service to those whom we love. Love is the flower that blossoms on the stem of goodness. These two virtues penetrate and complete each other. Their approach warms the little nooks and corners of our hearts. Under their influence the evil seeds deposited there by life and heredity are transformed. Both, when remaining a long time in any soul, render it capable of sacrifice, for what is sacrifice, except the expression of goodness and love? Closely united sisters, goodness and affection accompany each other. Both form one of the necessary conditions of happiness, which is ennobled and broadened by their contact. They might be compared to two careful gardeners, who, like watchful keepers, drive away any mischievous birds from the precincts of our hearts, thus aiding in their complete development.

We often encounter a happiness of vulgar essence which can dispense with their co-operation. We also find brambles and nettles which grow without any care. But where is the man who would not prefer the pretty flowers which ensnare our senses? Goodness! Love! Happiness! delightful trinity! Once realised, it never leaves the heart. The three entities composing it are interlinked with perfect art. One summons the other, and all three mutually support one another.

VIII. In every age, Love has enjoyed royal homage. The mystics
erect altars to it, and the sociologists see in it one of the bases of solidarity. Highly esteemed, it is nevertheless little practised. We respect it as we do certain divinities. We bow while uttering their names, but we turn aside from their precepts. Philosophers, scientists, sociologists, priests, or politicians, men of thought or men of action, all laud the benefits of love. Catherine of Sienna has perhaps best summed up the virtue of loving. In her letter to the Lord of Milan, she says: Love, love, and remember that you have been loved before loving.''Entirely from the Gospel, Saint Augustine has drawn the conclusion of the unconquerable pleasure obtained for us by love. We love to love, he cried in his expressive language. Amabam amure. But Saint Augustine lived in his dreams, and took his visions for realities. No, we do not love to love, for we lack education in loving. People have preached the duty of loving, but they have forgotten to teach us its moral advantages, and especially its repercussion upon happiness. For to love means to live a multiple life. We come out of ourselves, but we return far richer than at the moment of departure. We re-

enter our souls accompanied by delightful companions. The kindly affections on returning to our hearts, constitute a royal procession. Our ego is multiplied, holds to existence with more ties, and existence is more closely united to us. There are affections which betray. What does that matter! Others come to replace these, for the heart, the hearthstone of love, attracts the affections as the hive attracts the bees. We are never victims of love and goodness, for no one can deprive us of the pleasure of having been good or of having loved.

IX. We develop toward goodness, as we develop toward veracity. By

a singular mirage, we believe the contrary. We are almost all convinced that the primitive peoples were more refractory to falsehood, and more devoted to goodness. And yet the history of falsehood through the ages constantly denies this belief. Above all, it proves that the legendary virtue of the idyllic days is hut a legend. Primitive or savage peoples, warlike or nomad tribes, have always had a marked partiality for deceit. The Greeks, whom we like to regard as the ideal type of the nations, had a very mitigated respect for sincerity. The gods deceive men and, moreover, deceive one another. The principal heroes of Homer lie like the financial prospectuses of our own times. The wise Ulysses is an incorrigible teller of falsehoods. Pallas Athena gives us to understand that she loves him for that very reason. The other deities practise the same lax morality. Oaths are violated with extraordinary indifference. Men set little value on honesty, for the gods themselves favour liars. The Gospels, doubtless under the influence of the period, have not broken away from falsehood. In Genesis, the Lord reserves a wealth

of indulgence for the lie of Isaac. In Kings, Jehovah has recourse to a false spirit to ruin Achab. Elsewhere God {Ezekiel) ingenuously confesses that he is going to deceive the prophets who are not according to his heart. Lastly, what shall be said of Jeremiah, who openly turns his back upon the truth? Later Saint Paul makes a confession which disconcerts us. God, he tells us, has drawn glory from falsehood. The governments of the Middle Ages often maintained themselves by falsehood. According to Salvien, the Franks regarded perjury as a mere oratorical form. Diplomatic science, up to these latter days, sought its powers and its abilities solely in stratagem. The progress which is denied nevertheless lowered, with the lapse of the ages, the reign of falsehood, even compelling mendacity to apologise to truth, which is gradually spreading more and more into the relations between nation and nation. Scorned, falsehood shrinks and even denies that it is falsehood. The famous despatch of Ems, in which a diplomat of the fifteenth or the sixteenth century would have gloried, made the blood mount to the brow of a Bismarck. JVas not the effort to mask the lie put forth on this occasion a sublime homage to honesty? Truth, more and more triumphant, draws in her train goodness. Both complete, and harmonise with, each other, as cunning and falsehood complete each other in wickedness. Social truth is only social goodness. The noblest of Homers heroes does not give proof of as much provident kindness with respect to the aged as does the social aggregate of our own day. But individual and social goodness are mutually interlinked. One is immediate goodness; the other is goodness at a distance. Both are translated in concrete acts. Both,

thanks to their reciprocal support, grow equally in the atmosphere of truth.

X.Affection renders the poorest human beings the equal of

sovereigns. It assures us boundless power. We can love, even against the will of the object of our affection. The pleasure of loving, as well as its benefits, lies within ourselves. No one can deprive us of them for, inalienable, they are hidden in the depths of our individuality. It would be wrong to judge of the quality of wines without having tasted them. Who is the person who has practised goodness sufficiently to appreciate all its advantages and all its charms? Goodness and love furnish the most efficacious remedies for the troubles of life. They breathe upon pesa'mism and disenchantment, and trans- form the latter into reasons for existence. Now, the reason for existence is the salvation of the soul. Sully Prudhomme was a man devoted to goodness. Ill for twenty years, and a prey to superhuman sufferings, he retained a touching sweetness of disposition. Pain furrowed deep lines in his face. Yet his gaze, reflecting the treasures of his soul, triumphed over all his bodily weaknesses. His eyes smiled. The great poet, .who honoured me with his friendship, often talked of the vivifying power of Goodness. He spoke openly, lovingly, of the principle, while secretly and constantly cultivating its virtues. And as he had practised it, without discernment, toward all who approached him, he was frequently victimized. He had encountered both the wicked and the ungrateful. But he felt kindly toward all for having contributed to his supreme enjoyment. He was so imbued with goodness that he beheld it everywhere, and it became to him Duty and Beauty. To scatter around him the treasures of his soul, without hope of heavenly

reward or of earthly gratitude, became a divine joy. Goodness had become to him almost a luxury. The delights it had procured had set a heavenly impress upon his countenance, so ravaged by suffering. One day the poet was found dead, wearing the expres- sion of happiness peculiar to a man going forth under the guidance of Goodness. Goodness implies consciousness of the necessity of practising goodness; love, the imparting of this goodness to some one. Thus we proceed toward action. The imperious voice which enjoins goodness and love impels us toward the life which it fills and adorns for our use. Love and be good, ought to be enjoined upon the pessimists, and you will come to your senses after a time.

XI. Science and modem life preach powerfully regarding the benefits
of goodness, the sociological virtues of love. The salvation of the wealthy classes lies in a rightly understood solidarity. The prosperity of the poor is found in a rational development of the State. There is no longer any question of orders dictated by vaguely religious feelings. Their principles, wearied by long practice, no longer act. It is our thoroughly comprehended happiness which preaches and directs the exercise, on a large scale, of goodness and social love. Universal warfare, we may hope, will some day be replaced by universal love. Humanity is moving toward it, very slowly, no doubt, but it is infallibly moving in that direction. All the systems of contemporary morality find their definite expression in the principle of Goodness, which, among other things, includes solidarity and human perfectibility. Outside of the ideal of goodness, Fouillee says* we find only poor diminutives or

succedaneums of morality. And the same philosopher deduces from it this precept of morality that is independent of time and environment : Be good, with a view to universal goodness, which would constitute universal happiness. Vainly do we scoff at goodness as the indispensable foundation of moral progress and the salvation of human beings. It is constantly enlarging and developing. It is increasing before our eyes, as it has grown through the centuries. Only, invisible, it is seen solely through goodness itself. We must be good to perceive its development and its blessings, as we must believe in God to see His activity on earth.

XII.

Have we become better? is asked on all sides. Like religions, the social sciences give a negative answer. The religions and the sciences are equally mistaken. While the former wrongly identify pity or credulity with goodness, the latter suffer themselves to be influenced too greatly by the deceptive statistics.of crime. We may observe, per contra, the rising edifice of solidarity, which is chiefly constructed by the efforts of loving and beloved collectivity. Everywhere the same cry is raised: let us make sacrifices for a happier and better humanity. The number of those who die for this cause is constantly augmenting. And these martyrs are devoting themselves, not in the selfish interest of a heavenly reward, but in the name of the impersonal principle of the human race of the future.
Morale des idees forces.

The physicians who brave death to enrich science with an undiscovered microbe; the aeronauts who expose themselves to the

most terrible accidents; the revolutionists who give their lives for the Society of the future; the workmen who, without any immediate necessity, join in the strike, are all labouring, in the main, solely for the benefit of generations which perhaps will exist only in their imagination. And what is this solidarity, which produces the greatest sacrifices, if not ideal goodness, intense goodness, emancipated from the narrow bonds of the unity of blood or of visible interests? Of what value are the patriotism and the virtue, often purely theatrical, of the great heroes of Greece, almost always fighting for the spectators, in comparison with the martyrs of the Russian revolution, who died in obscurity for the citizenship of the future? The goodness that animates the latter is of a superior essence. Their death, we are told, is often barren. What does that matter? The uselessness of the sacrifice does not take an iota from its divine virtue. Social institutions tend more and more to diminish the wretchedness of the humiliated. They also tend to sow upon earth the happiness of all through all. Goodness takes possession of human beings. Conscious in some, instinctive in others, it acts under all circumstances. Rich or poor apply its principles under the form of forced taxes or voluntary contributions. Its results tend to render earth more attractive and men perfect. Goodness has ascended in rank. It is more complex and, for that very reason, more unheeded. Under the form of weakness of the soul or of instinctive emotions, we should be softened. Classified and in the position of a social duty, it remains indiscernible. This does not prevent it from growing. The day is not distant when it will be understood that the best human being is the one who does the most good to his community.

XIII. The teacher of my childhood, with whom I enjoy examining

human affairs, laid his spectacles carefully on his desk, smiled pleasantly at me and continued: The boat which was taking us toward the Cape of Good Hope touched at a little island. While the vessel was being unloaded I went ashore. The pleasant appearance of the country charmed me. The inhabitants we met on the way manifested a fraternal friendliness in their greetings, a touch of tenderness in their gaze. Every one welcomed the stranger with a kindly word. At last I stopped in front of a house where the prominent people in the village were assembled. Their conversation ceased for a moment. An old man welcomed me. I expressed my delight at finding myself among people who were contented with their lot. The old man nodded assent: You may add, he said, and very happy! We have lived thus for years under the reign of a good sovereign whom we all worship. We owe to him the joy that fills our souls, for we owe to him the affection that colours our lives, the goodwill of our relations. Ah! great heavens! Why should nt we love him? He has destroyed envy among us. He has revealed to us the resources within ourselves. He has also taught us that love is the source of joys which fortune cannot purchase. We are happy without thinking of our happiness. Envy has no hold upon us. We are not bound to it and it does not dwell in our hearts. You will find among us neither false luxury, nor the desire tolord it over our neighbours. And the longer we live under this monarchs government, the more we adore, love, and practise his laws. What is the name of this sovereign? I asked in delight. Goodness, replied the kind old man.

B.The A ffections as Sources of Happiness I.The Family I.However dispossessed our life may be, there are always a few sweet
bonds which unite us to our environment, bonds which are unforgettable and inestimable. They enlarge our ego. They relate it to the existence of others and prompt it to share their joys and sorrows. Family life doubtless creates, with its joys, certain duties. The source of varied delights, it is often a source of annoyances, disappointments, sorrows. But when we compare what we owe to it, and what it has cost us, we readily understand that it is one of the greatest trumps in the struggle for happiness. It shields us with its benevolent protection, when, very young, we enter life defenceless. It rouses onr courage in the struggle for existence. It sustains us in our misfortunes, and facilitates the accomplishment of our duty in living. The family also furnishes the first lesson in solidarity and sociability. The affection and indulgence which serve as its foundations transform and maintain our ego in the world of men, that enlargement of the family group. To family joys are opposed the fetters that weigh down existence. A family, it is said, is often only a group of members whose interests are frequently opposed. Escape, always difficult, often becomes even impossible. The obstacles to divorce bind the wife to the husband for life. The privileges granted even to unworthy parents often prevent their children from emancipating themselves from their guardianship before attaining majority. The father often finds himself compelled to toil for a bad wife. .He must support children who bring him sorrow. Fathers suffer through their sons; daughters

suffer through their mothers. These examples might be multiplied. We linger to look at these shadows, but suddenly a ray of stmshine from the paradise of family life makes them vanish. Nothing under the sun is perfect. In deeds of goodness we find traces of evil, as in a soul succumbing to sins we discover some misunderstood virtues. But the abode of the just remains good, in spite of the weaknesses displayed. The same is true of family life. By the side of its victims, humanity in the mass seeks and finds in it treasures of felicity. And precisely because humanity grasps more and more the beneficent virtues of family life, it is striving to perfect the family. Under every latitude the same cry is heard: let us improve the family organisation. Marriage is being reformed. We are endeavouring to perfect the relations between parents and children, and to establish ever stronger fraternal bonds between all the members of the family by introducing equality and liberty. Where poverty might have destroyed family affection, the government intervenes. It takes the sick and the aged under its charge; it comes to the aid of large families, and extends its protection to over- numerous children. No matter how opposite the various systems of government may be, monarchies, autocracies, and democracies rival one another in zeal when the object in view is to create funds for old age, sickness, or free education.

II. When mutual sympathy and love have replaced money and social
advantages as the principal foundations^ of the marriage institution, when parents profit by the conquests of child- psychology, when the little ones are reared in the sanctuary of love that the family of the future will become, the vexations incidental to the family will

diminish. For, in family life, as well as in so many of the domains of our social activity, men are making the greatest efforts to have the right to misfortune. For instance, we feed children for years on falsehoods, and then require them to be upright men. How charming is the exclamation of Montaigne: There is nothing so sweet as little French children; but they usually disappoint our hopes. And the great moralist, having raised the question, answers it with delicious ingenuity: I have heard people of good judgment say that the schools to which they are sent, which are numerous, exert this brutalising influence. Already! Yet we are understanding more and more that children have the same right to truth that their fathers have to liberty and equality. The joys which children obtain at the fireside we are striving to turn to the advantage of all the social structure. For the child is the incarnation of happiness. It proclaims and bestows this gift. It is joy wandering among us, as Victor Hugo says. A child is the augmentation of the life of the parents. It enlarges our present and extends our future. Children, in addition to being the happiness of their parents, also constitute the power of the State. Many nations have perished through the diminution of the birth-rate. The active competition of modern governments, and especially their exaggerated militarism, render this problem more serious than ever to all peoples concerned for the future. Yet it has been noted that the birth-rate is in inverse proportion to culture. Within the frontiers of a country, the most ignorant and the poorest inhabitants, especially those who are affected by alcohol, multiply most rapidly. The intellectual citizens, on the other hand, have few children. These are undoubtedly carefully observed facts, but they are not inevitable laws. Science has not proved that intellectual, sober, or provident persons possess an

inferior reproductive power. On the other hand, when we consider the reproductive force of man, who could give life to ten thousand individuals, while he is asked to offer the community only three or four, we perceive that the diminution of the birth-rate is intentional. A normal woman can give birth to from twelve to fifteen children without impairing her health. We should not forget, moreover, that the sane and normal energy of women aspires to people the earth, according to the picturesque statement of Ellen Key. Then what is the cause or what are the causes of the diminution of the birth-rate, so much to be regretted from the standpoint of the happiness of the family and of the prosperity of the State? Sometimes the man, sometimes the woman, sometimes both, refuse to perform this duty on which their happiness frequently depends. The motives are various. In making laws for the woman and the child, the modem government has forgotten the fate of the parents. The child and the woman were formerly sources of income to the father.of the family. Now, thanks to the laws limiting and regulating their labour, they are often a burden upon him. No doubt the child and the woman will never be sufficiently protected, but we must also think of the man who bears the expenses of these beneficent laws. A series of laws are imposed in favour of fathers of large families. Reduction of taxes, freedom from military service, pecuniary assistance, free schools and clothing, pensions granted to mothers in proportion to the number of their children, and a thousand other means must, and doubtless will, be utilised in order to create a premium on large families. Mothers fulfil a social function more advantageous than that of many officials. The rewards and encouragements which should be lavished upon them should be regarded only as acts of justice and honesty

toward beings whose burdens enable the State to realise its objects. An opposite policy should be applied to the rich. Taxes on inheritance should remove all sorts of privileges from an only child. The government will be able to take as an average the family of four children, and levy the same tax of succession on all families. These measures are conceivable only in countries like France, where the diminution of the population threatens to extinguish the vital forces of the nation. Reformed fiscal policy will thus allow the amelioration of family life.

III. From the top to the bottom of the social scale, there is to-day an
outcry in which all join: let us make family life happier. The progress of ideas and of family life has doubtless made many of its foundations unstable. In our desire to perfect and improve everything, we have broken some of the over-rusty springs. But, while discarding the principles that would have destroyed family life, we have not yet ^introduced all those which will make it live. Yet a scrutiny of the social horizon enables one to perceive messengers who are the bearers of good news. Never, in any period, has so much solicitude been shown for the future of the family. From every direction comes the appeal for union and happiness through this source. Even those who are accused of wishing to destroy it, are really only supporting another way of salvation. They would like to replace the autocracy of the father, based upon the respect imposed, by a union based upon love. They desire to have taken into the account respect for the human personality of all the members of the family group. How numerous are the opposing interests! But let us hope that they may be reconciled. A day will come when the contradictions which

exist between the interests of the family and those of the government will be allayed by the ennoblement of character. The crisis through which family life is passing does not render its destruction inevitable. Quite the contrary. It is the best proof of the extreme interest which modem society attaches to the smallest details of this complex and vital problem. No, the family is not dying, but developing. In a forest, at the time when trees are pruned, the branches which lie on the ground give us the impression of endless disorder. But when the dead branches have been picked up, we see after a little these trees resuming their life with fresh youth and vigour.

II.Friendship, Native Country, Humanity I.The feeling of friendship makes us grow morally. Love, under all its
forms, renders us better. The heart is ennobled in the yearning toward others. It might be said that it grows in proportion as love or friendship brings into it new objects of endearment. The more a heart is elevated, the better it feels the reflex of the services rendered, the affection poured forth outside. Crabbed minds like to diffuse poison into the noble joys of friendship and love. To these feelings of rare essence are opposed commonplace friendships with their train of treacheries. We speak of feelings being exploited, of feelings being feigned. We even utter the word dupe, so harsh to our self-love. All these recriminations rest upon a false basis. We forget to bring into these calculations the value of the joys experienced. In friendship, as well as in love, the question of real importance is the joy we have derived from the feeling. We have been betrayed. What does that matter! No one can deprive us of the emotions we have enjoyed. The

past is ours. It cannot be torn from our souls. Services rendered have never been paid by reciprocity! But we forget the pleasure experienced at the moment when it was possible for us to oblige the sister-soul. That is the supreme reward of the act.

II. The ancients took into account the importance of friendship for
the better operation of the government. According to Aristotle, friendship is even superior to justice for, suppose, he tells us, that men are united by friendship, there would be no need of justice; but supposing them to be just, there would still be need of friendship. According to Horace, nothing is comparable, in the judgment of the sage, to an agreeable friend. Even the shadow of a friend, Menander sang, renders man happy. Montaigne, whose friendship for La Boetie was most touching, cries, in speaking of the man who was dearer to him than his glory and his life: I would certainly have more willingly trusted myself to him than to myself. Montaigne also relates this pretty anecdote of classical friendship: Eudamidas, a Corinthian, had two friends, Charix- enus and Areteus. On his death-bed, being poor, Eudamidas made his will thus: I bequeath to Areteus to feed and support my mother in her old age; to Charixenus to arrange my daughters marriage and to give her a dowry as large as he can furnish, and in case either of the two should die, I put in his place the survivor. One of the two men having died, Areteus fulfilled the legacy of his deceased friend.

III. Coarse calculation, having become the basis of our actions,

excluded through its establishment the highest joys. The deceptions

which followed are all the more painful because we are the principal culprits. We have made a sacrifice of money or of troublesome deeds with a view to another service which was not rendered. It is as if we had purchased a security on the stock exchange with the expectation of a speedy rise. The advance did not take place. The business itself failed. The blundering speculator has only himself to blame. But what connection is there between this unsuccessful operation and the friendship or love which seek and find the profit in their own existence? They realise both their capital and the interests of their acts a hundredfold in the very moment when they perform these. Such is the situation of the parents, friends, husbands and wives, children, lovers, with regard to the services rendered to the beings who were or are dear to their hearts. The disappointments caused by friendship or any other crushed affection are doubtless painful, but we forget the delights experienced during the continuance of the tie.

IV. The admiration which we lavish on our neighbours is also a

source of higher pleasures. There is something infinitely sweet in the flight of this feeling, rising toward beings whom we believe to be our superiors. We then live a double existence, above all, we live a higher life, wh ch bears us toward the summits of the ideal. One might almost speak of the delight of admiration. Happy are those who can maintain admiration in all its fulness. Those who thus feel it are often more to be envied than its beneficiaries. Yet a day may come when our admiration vanishes. We have bestowed it upon those who are unworthy. Let us console ourselves. No one can deprive us of the benefit of having admired, as no one can deprive us of the joys stored in the depths of our souls.

V. The native country is only the enlargement of the family. The

quality which gives to man a privileged position is precisely this faculty of going out of himself, of passing beyond his own narrow life to project it toward, and to mingle it with, the life of others. Kind nature has surrounded the exercise of this privilege with all her cares. It is sweet to be loved, but it is also necessary to love. Man cannot live isolated. Compelled to lean upon others, he finds in this support the charm and the foundation of his own existence. What the family is to the child, the native country afterward becomes to the man. It is through the love we feel for our native land that we again find the higher pleasures of existence. We labour for our native country and we benefit by its intellectual and moral greatness. We profit by its language, its institutions, its laws, its protection, its thought. Whoever should believe himself independent of others, in his affections, his thoughts, and his deeds, August Comte tells us, could not even formulate such a blasphemy, without an instant contradiction, because his very language is not his own.' The same thought applies to all the elementary ideas in the science of life. All that man possesses, all that benefits him, comes from others, and he enjoys these privileges, thanks to others aid. Patriotism, aware of its duties and of its purposes, is of recent birth. But from its very inception, it has developed. Its essence is modified in conformity with the changes that are coming over modern life. Spiteful and exclusive, dreaming only of quarrelling, patriotism is growing more and more peaceful and anxious for human dignity. The patriotism of men of intellect and of heart invites fraternally the patriotism of their neighbours, all patriotisms, to rival one another in

the domain of the conquests of labour and of opinion. After murderous wars, the peoples are imderstanding better and better the horrors of war, and the cruelties of conquests. The respect which labour inspires, as well as the increasing importance of labourers, will only strengthen international harmony. The leaders of the nations, and the nations themselves, publicly render homage to peace and demand her reign. Her decisive triumph is approaching, but is not yet a reality. There will doubtless be more wars, which are lying in wait for us, like the last flames of a dying fire. As those who provoke them will be barbarians, in comparison with those who will be obliged to endure them and to defend themselves, it is important to be strong, in order not to be submerged by this new invasion of the anti-humane elements.
ystem of Positive Philosophy.

General disarmament is an ideal which we shall not reach without still remaining for a long time armed. The moral progress which is everywhere asserting itself also proceeds from the overturning of the ancient international practices, based upon lies, spoliation, and acts of brigandage. A rupture occurred between backward diplomacy and the peoples moving forward. This scission manifested itself chiefly during the last war of the Balkans. It is the honesty of the nations which, having profited by the immoral inclinations of diplomacy, saved us a European war. But, since diplomacy is no longer a career of caste, but is fully opened to all the social classes, it will, in its turn, be elevated. Renovated by the new moral currents which are appearing in every domain, it will

understand better the advantages of virtue, and will end by realising the idea so eloquently expressed by Theodore Roosevelt* that mankind possesses worth only through love. It is inadmissible that a nation could treat other nations differently from the manner in which an honest man treats other men. The more we love, the higher we rise in the human scale; faith and the ideal still remain the most powerful levers of progress and 6f happiness.
Lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, April 24, 1910.

I. If patriotism should vanish from the earth, it would need to be

reborn. Religions are weakening, we are toldanother reason for not diminishing the patrimony of the ideal, in which grow and flower the forces of life. Patriotism adorns our existence. It has procured and still procures for us the highest motives of living and acting. But there is patriotism and patriotism. The patriotism of former times consisted chiefly in hatred of neighbouring nations, in the desire to humiliate, to conquer, or to destroy them. Human solidarity has suppressed these antiquated ideas. Modem patriotism leads us to love our own country fervently, without hating the country of our neighbours. We understand better and better that our own safety depends, not only on ourselves, but also on the people by whom we are surrounded. Abstract thought and economical interests find themselves brought nearer, in spite of frontiers. For the genius of the foreigner gives us indescribable joys, as his material wealth secures us numberless

delights and pleasures. We cannot imagine a man living happily in the midst of unfortunates who are starving to death. Neither can a people prosper among nations reduced to poverty and slavery. In contributing to the moral and material greatness of the native country, we are working at the same time for mankind. For the happiness of all fatherlands is formed of the happiness of all their constituent elements. Patriotism thus conceived finds its sanction in the necessity of ensuring its triumph and its duration. When any country whatever strives to destroy international harmony, it is the duty and the right of the others to defend the nation that is threatened. International peace, the essential condition of happiness, can be founded only upon the mutual respect of the peoples and of their rights. Pacific evolution, with obligatory arbitration and other institutions of the same nature, has no other object, tacitly pursued, or loudly acknowledged. The march to the star often renders us giddy. Those who have attained it should not forget that the point in question is not to destroy fatherlands, but to bring them nearer to one another. So long as the law of justice does not reign between nation and nation as it is supposed to reign between man and man, the fatherland will remain the sole source whence flow the possibilities of our existence. Yet the fatherland is not always equally gentle and, especially, equally just toward all its children. Nothing under the sun is perfect! But it would be as senseless to set fire to a city because our house was not satisfactory in all respects, as to wish to destroy a fatherland, on the pretext that some of its citizens possessed greater privileges than others. To develop, we must live. In the present state of affairs,

patriotism continues the essential food upon which the peoples live. From this arises the necessity for the army and armies, and the duty of each citizen, however humanitarian he may be, to contribute, not only to the moral and intellectual grandeur, but also to the material defence of his native land. We know what the State is; but what is the fatherland? The fatherland is the commimity of moral and m.aterial interests which imite the inhabitants of a country, based, moreover, upon the desire to belong to the same native land. Lack of this desire makes a native of Alsace-Lorraine or a Pole of Posen not a patriotic German, just as an inhabitant of Tren tino is an Italian though an Austrian citizen. Often it is enough to be aware that we belong to a certain country and to collaborate in its greatness, to be a genuine patriot. Under these conditions, a black or a yellow man, a Christian, a Jew, or a Pagan, but imbued with French ideas, becomes a French patriot, or penetrated with American feelings, an American patriot. Along tradition undoubtedly gives great cohesion to the unity of aspirations and of feelings. But an enlightened conscience supplies the lack of time. And the conscience or, if the word is preferable, knowledge, is of greater value, in many cases, than the irrational voice of the vanished generations. It is the lack of comprehension that frequently facilitates and provokes the abandonment of the native land for a misty humanity or the class interest, no less vague, which we christen by the name of the fatherland of the toilers. Without an enlightened conscience, there can be no elevated patriotism. Conscience alone can lead us to the international fraternity founded upon the peaceful rivalry of human aspirations which will probably always remain differentiated by the conditions of the surrounding environment.

Contestable and discussed elsewhere, the duty of being a patriot is manifesting itself especially in France and is becoming evident to every Frenchman. This arises from the fact that, in all the ages, the greatness of France has mingled with the progress of humanity. The genius of her history always made her wage war for the benefit of other peoples. Even the conception of mankind as the prolongation of the fatherland is, preeminently, the work of the great Revolution. After the misfortimes of the Terrible Year, the beautiful humanitarian dreams underment a visible decline. A second war disastrous to France would deal for ages a mortal blow to human solidarity. If we sought to heap up, Michelet has said somewhere, what each nation has from disinterested motives expended in gold, in blood, and in efforts of every description for objects which could serve only the world at large, the pyramid of France would rise to the heavens. That is why all the nations, great or small, aside from the mean calculations of diplomacy, desire a France that is strong within and without. Instinctively, they all share in the evolution of her life. The weaker and, perhaps for that very reason, the more sympathetic ones, loudly admit that they have two fatherlands, their own and France. The same thing occurs frequently, in Russia or in the South American republics, that have only love for France, with so much ardour that it becomes touching. Patriotism, in its noble modem meaning, having nothing in common with hatred of the foreigner, or prejudice of race or religion, is assured of a long continuance. This is particularly true of French patriotism, the necessary refuge of all the humanitarians. It will perhaps survive all the others, provided

France remains faithful to her historic genius, which has made her the first, because the best beloved, of the nations.

II, Mankind is on a higher elevation than our native land. To attain

its heights a very lofty soul is required, but, in the present condition of society, that elevation can be reached only through love for our native land. When we love our country intelligently and humanely, we also love the human family. Then we understand that human happiness depends on the great solidarity of human beings and tends toward the closer and closer unification of peoples, races, and creeds. Before reaching this Paradise, there is a long and toilsome road to traverse. "Let everything go!* cry those who are impulsive and impatient, and move toward those heavenly regions. This haste entails numerous perils. We must not act as if the goal in view were already attained. In this march forward, the peoples resemble a gang of workmen engaged in felling a giant tree. If the ropes are loosed before the favourable moment, the tree falls back with all its weight and inflicts fatal injuries. A balloon is permitted to rise toward the heights only when it is sufficiently inflated and has power enough to maintain itself in the air. By acting otherwise, we should provoke an inevitable catastrophe, entailing, with the destruction of the aerostat, that of the passengers. It is the same with countries as with private property. Their destruction may figure in a dream of future humanity. But beware of those who would desire to destroy henceforth their beneficent forces, which are necessary to the progress of mankind.

III. Happiness thus finds numberless benefits in the vast domain of

the affections. Its frontiers, accessible to all, extend very far, offering a delightful and hospitable shelter to all who desire to seek its refuge. All visitors receive the same welcome. Rich or poor, sovereign or slave, can draw the same amount of joys from family tenderness, friendship, or love. Doubtless special favours are reserved for refined sensibilities. But, by dint of exercising affectionate feelings, we all arrive at the same degree of perfection. The simple heart of a fieldlabourer can rise to heights of loving which are inaccessible to a prince of the intellect. For we improve while loving, and the sources of love are found within us all. C.Active Life and Happiness

I. There is something essentially divine in labour. It ennobles and

elevates the soul and strengthens the body. It spreads around our ego like an atmosphere of satisfaction and serenity. Action, incarnated in movement, presides over the fate of the world and the destiny of organised beings. The most eternal and the most permanent force in Space and in Time is the vibration of the atom which penetrates the great Universe. We all instinctively feel its delights. Apparently working for a goal more or less near at hand, as soon as it is attained, we thrust back its boundaries and continue our advance. Work is often like hunting. The product is of little importance, the essential thing is the activity which it imposes upon us. A source of forgetfulness of the anxieties of life, it gives birth to the majority of its joys. Happiness without labour is as incomprehensible as life without movement. The forms of labour vary infinitely, but its principle constitutes a vital necessity, like sleep. Moreover, like the latter, it is imposed upon the entire world. Even idle people are compelled to have recourse to work, on

pain of seeing their physical or intellectual powers perish. According to Aristotle {Nico- macliean Ethics) pleasures themselves proceed solely from activity. Without putting vim into play, without activity, there is no enjoyment. God has imposed upon us very severe trials on this earth, Legouve has said, but He has created labour, the compensation for everything. To Voltaire, life and action even appear identical. Not to be occupied, and not to exist, he tells us, amount to the same thing. And the philosopher is right. While inactive, we vegetate; while active, we live.

II. There has been too much insistence upon the necessity of labour,
but not enough upon the pleasures it affords. In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn thy bread, remains like a menace suspended over our life. Its harshness terrifies us. Under the influence of this sad suggestion we have acquired a horror of work. We talk too much of the discomforts of toil. It is a little like a rose whose thorns alone are visible.No, Heaven has not decreed labour as a punishment. Rather is it an adornment, a luxury of life. Fatigued by work, we yearn for rest. But this rest, once gained, involves unutterable evils. Longevity, to which, wittingly or unwittingly, we all aspire, smiles only upon active people. The custom of retiring between the age of forty and fifty years is fatal to the small tradesman. All these men living on small incomes, who dream only of rest, usually die at the end of a certain time. Diseases waste and decimate them, and their intellect diminishes. Senility, with its train of attendant ills, soon follows. It is beneficial, as we grow old, to limit our activity; there is nothing more injurious than to relinquish it entirely. The great men of the English Government whose mode of life is known to us afford an

instructive example. Up to the most advanced age, they do not cease to labour physically and mentally. The octogenarian Gladstone, commenting on the Bible and sawing wood, is a stock example. One of my friends, a Minister under Queen Victoria, who has passed his eightieth birthday, has just sent me his first attempts at translating Shelleyinto French verse. It is by reason of this ceaseless activity that their health is maintained robust until the fatal departure.

III. Labour is as indispensable as food. But, like the latter, it requires

selection and careful use. Excess is fatal. The unfortunate conditions under which labour is carried on cause fatal consequences. The entire social agitation of modern times aims, in the main, only to improve the conditions of labour, to render it more equitable, but not to make it disappear from the world. Those who misunderstand the necessity of labour are ignorant of the elementary foundations of the operation of our organism. The definite object of social reform aspires in the main merely to improve the conditions of labour. Our individual happiness, as well s that of the community, is obtainable solely at this price. The society of the future, which will require labour from every one, will benefit chiefly the numerous w^ealthy persons who are the unfortunate victims of their indolence. Through the annulment, by the tax upon inheritances, of the possibility of living upon the labour of their ancestors, the sons of the rich will be safeguarded from rotting morally and physically in a degrading idleness. For work is a genuine gift from heaven. Universally accessible, it becomes a source of universal enjoyment. Optimism is active, pessimism is passive. The joy of life is a fruit that grows upon deeply tilled soil. Idlers should be pitied. Their dissatisfaction with life flows from their inaction, and this

dissatisfaction develops into diseases which result from laziness. Society should treat idlers as Ulysses dealt with his unfortunate companions, the lotus-eaters. He took them by force to the ships, in spite of their tears, and fastened them to the rowers benches. And, seated in ranks, they struck with their oars the foaming sea.

IV. Labour, provided it is never abandoned, leads to everything.

Talent is only the fruit of perseverance. So everybody can have talent on condition of desiring it energetically and intelligently. According to Buflon, genius itself is only long-continued patience. Doubtless this statement is erroneous. There is something in genius which escapes our efforts and our will. We may console ourselves, however, by thinking that mankind owes far more to the persevering labour of the great and small talents, than to those rare meteors that have illumined, for very brief moments, the sky of its history. After all, many of the beneficent forces which we baptise with the name of genius were only great talents. But genius, like talent, cannot dispense with labour. The literary heritage bequeathed by EmileZola is perfectly stupendous. His annual production, often reaching one thousand to twelve hundred printed pages, awakened the astonishment of his numerous friends. One day I asked him the secret of his surprising creation. I write only three or four pages a day,*' he said, but I produce them regularly. Multiply these by the number of days in the year, and the years of labour which we are in a condition to furnish, and you will have the secret of my production which, to so many people, appears prodigious.

V. But there are degrees of activity, as there are degrees of

happiness. In the first place, there is the vain and sterile bustle which should not be confounded with sane, productive labour. There is work whose excessive burden or insanitary conditions exhaust the individual, and destroy his health. There is exclusively physical or exclusively mental labour. Both, carried to extremes, are equally harmful to the integrity of our normal life. The important point is that work should be the beneficial corollary of our life, its supreme regulator. People working only with the brain must have physical exercise; manual labourers require intellectual exercise. The ideal of active life would be to harmonise better our special tastes and the mandates of our health. Fate does not often grant the attainment of this ideal just as it often denies us the ideal woman as a wife, or a fortune sufficient for our appetites. It is the part of the thinking and toiling man to correct the errors of destiny. He does not always succeed, but the efforts of his will often afford him almost as much happiness as his decisive triumph would obtain. Without joy in effort, without the various satisfactions which labour bestows under its eternal form of the struggle for existence, we should still be in the age of the stone broken by percussion.

VI. Action is an element and a condition of happiness. Men should

not be told according to the famous exclamation of Elizabeth Browning, of that fair day when all shall rest. Nay, the fairest day will be that when all men will labour in a rational way, according to their tastes and to the requirements of their health. The purpose of social progress is only to render labour obligatory upon the idlers, to lessen its burden upon the lowly, and to bring more order into disordered toil. The' happiness of individuals and of the community can only

gain by this result.

D.Happiness Accessible to All I. Nature has always been calumniated. A systematic disparagement
conceals from man its beauties and its benefits. We are all under an invincible inclination to slander its objects, to disfigure its course. Certain systems of morality, which should glorify it, only degrade it to the level of the ill-humour of mankind. Man, forgetful of the privileged part which he has been made to play in the progress of the world, has always shov/n himself ungrateful toward his destiny. Instead of thinking of the risks of the evolution which has placed him at the head of created beings, he does nothing but lament over his fate. Yet all that the gods had in their possession, they have relinquished in favour of men. Strength and intelligence, the domination and the comprehension of environment, the adaptation to external conditions, how many divine gifts, including the mind, in which the deity itself is born and vanishes! Dissatisfied man constantly asks more; he asks chiefly the impossible. Does he not resemble the lucky gambler who, after breaking the bank, grumbles because it is empty?

II. Kind nature has permitted men to appropriate for private use
certain of her elements. We might say, however, that, solicitous for the happiness of the species, she has reserved for the advantage of all her essential benefits. Inalienable and never alienated, these serve to benefit every human being, for all are equally dear to the eternal principle of matter. Wherever we turn our eyes, we find inexhaustible elements of

happiness. We have only to will, and they are ours. Among their number are the Beauties of Nature. Let us but try to understand these. To do so we have only to love them. This is all nature asks to enable her to console, embellish, and strengthen our life. The source of lofty pleasures, she multiplies and places these within our reach. To idlers, she furnishes a pleasant pastime. We need only gaze, and the soul is filled with unutterable charms. To the toilers, and the wearied ones of life, she affords restorative relaxation; to all, the joy of living. Equally tender and beneficent to the entire world, she knows neither the privileges of birth nor of fortune. Those most abandoned by fate have the same right and the same possibility of warming and renewing themselves within her bosom. Mountain or sea, field or forest, all incarnate the infinite aspects of beauty, the causes of various joys. It would be difficult to enumerate the sources of pleasure which the contemplation of nature affords. They are innumerable: sunrise and sunset, fair weather and rain, the moon with its varied changes, sea and mountain, forest or plain, rivers or lakes, the clouded or the starry sky, azure or impenetrable space, the melancholy of the eternal passing of things which will never give the integral expression of their infinite aspects, their repercussions upon man, mysterious, fugitive, and indiscernible. Are not the mountains, the waves, and the sky a part of me and of my soul, as Manfred said?" For earth is full of Paradise. Insensate man persists in seeking it where there is no chance that it will be found. When, wearied by terrestrial landscapes, we raise our eyes toward the sky, what an illimitable spectacle of wealth and grandeur is presented to our admiration!

The clouds driven by the wind afford an infinite variety of forms of beauty, whose observation gives us pleasures of rare intensity. And whatever the poverty of our life may be, whatever may be the latitude that shelters us, the view of the heavens will be presented with the same freedom to every man and to every woman.
Are not the mountains, waves and skies a part Of me, and of my soul, as I of them? Byron.

We admire art, but we do not sufficiently admire nature. Yet is there a painter who is capable of rendering the innumerable shades of her beauty ? There is not one, as there is no architect qualified to imitate her structures of unrivalled boldness, of grandeur surpassing our imagination, of an art more sublime than all the arts living or vanished. Before, beside, above, and below us, there are worlds of beauty, more vast and rich than those gathered in the most famous museums.

III. Mankind is only a theatre offered to the eyes of human beings.

Each one of us is at the same time actor and spectator. The part which we play often does not depend upon ourselves, but that of looking, judging, laughing, applauding, hissing, filling our souls with ecstasy or bitterness, vibrating or suffering with the actors, constitutes our indestructible privilege, a privilege possessed in the same degree by the king and the farm-labourer and exercised according to the greatness of their souls. Whoever accustoms himself to look around him creates sources of solid pleasure. Monarchs themselves confess that they are our subjects,subjects of our reasoning, of our judgment. We summon them before our minds, we

admire or despise them, we applaud or hiss them. The most dreaded autocrats are thus transformed into prisoners whom we summon before the bar of our consideration. Vainly do they desire to rule, to humble us. We succeed through our reason in subjecting to our judgments our haughtiest masters. After having taken a seat at the performance of life, we have a right to listen to the finest, the most famous among the artists. We follow them in the smallest details of their career. In case of need, we abandon them, choosing at our pleasure more attractive actors. A delightful spectacle, which we attend or leave with absolute independence, a performance as changeful as the colour of the sky, never twice the same: enveloping, impressing, thrilling! It presents itself in everything that is said and done. Does not the point in question principally concern human beings and ideas which touch us most closely: whom we love or abhor, whose triumph we desire or fear?

IV. The progress of education and of the modem press have

singularly enlarged the stage of life. The rarest, the most foreign, the most varied actors are thus introduced into the performance presented to our curiosity. Our distant ancestors were shut within the precincts of a narrow building which only the members of their tribe could enter. Gradually the widened edifice has served to shelter actors belonging to larger and larger groups. Now the entire world is contributing to make our individual life more interesting. We profit by certain pleasures, just as we derive benefit from sleep unconsciously. Vainly do they adorn existence and obtain for us unexpected delights. We ignore these pleasvres by not giving them our attention. But let us try to pause before the spectacle observed in

a sort of lethargy. Let us reflect for an instant upon the varied pleasures which we obtain by reading a paper that publishes for our perusal the most curious facts, collected from every quarter of the globe. Moreover, if a phenomenon becomes especially interesting, the paper will take pains to present its most striking, most dramatic, most exciting sides. Seated in an arm-chair, we follow all the vicissitudes of the worldtheatre. Unknown people are thus working in distant countries to arouse, to maintain, and to satisfy our curiosity. How many varied sensations, how many intense pleasures, how many noble and lofty thoughts spring up within us at the contact of this life of the human race presenting itself in a palace dazzling with light! Our pleasure increases in proportion as we grasp the meaning of this complex spectacle. What a source of joys, of pleasures, and of thoughts lies in the lives of other people which seem to be enacted for our diversion. To enjoy the sweetness of the open air, we need only think of the unpleasant consequences when it is foul. To grasp intelligently the value of this human intimacy which the perfection of means of communication and of the printing-press bestows upon modern society, think what it would have meant to the great intellects of the past. Imagine Dante, Montaigne, or Shakespeare living under conditions making possible the ceaseless contact of mankind through space, sharing the festivals accessible to the humblest among us, and we shall better understand the worth and the interest of our surroundings.

V. A fairy is visiting man. In her kindness, she offers him a remedy

for isolation, lassitude of mind, the vexations of life. Whenever you feel unhappy and need forgetfulness of your troubles;

when, wounded by life, you desire a supreme comforter; when, harassed by the dulness of your environment, you aspire to the society of a superior being; when you desire to laugh or to weep over the miseries here below in company with a brother spirit, you have merely to take this mysterious talisman and whoever you call will come at your summons. The fairy, having thus spoken, gave to man the book. The book which, thanks to its modest price and the increasing number of libraries, has become as accessible as the newspaper, affords an inexhaustible source for augmenting the intensity of our existence! It is not the book of one country, it is the book of every country which, responding to the closer and closer bonds uniting the human intelligence, is presented to us. The supreme thought of all minds is thus lavished upon every man! We enjoy this privilege, as we enjoy the benefits of oxygen, and pay no heed.

VI. Men are not very interesting. They resemble one another, we are
told, like two leaves of the same tree. Observe them more closely, and you will leam that what we term similitude, is frequently the result of our ignorance of things. When we think that fifteen persons can be seated around a table in i , 350 thousand millions of ways, it becomes more than paradoxical to talk about the uniformity of men. Because blindness prevents us from seeing all that there is to see of the external world, it should not be inferred that the latter has vanished. Men, with their physiological and intellectual varieties, should present myriads and myriads of dissimilar beings. What is more agitating than a human life which is developing in our

immediate vicinity? There can be nothing more dramatic than the human groups which, above and below us, are struggling against their destinies!

VII. Fatigued by the drama of men, we have before us that of the

animals. What a harvest of vast sensations this domain also affords! We have ripened. In our enlarged comprehension of created beings we know the unity of soul that pervades Nature. It is no longer solely the scholars or the philosophers who proclaim this unity; the poets and novelists are also imbued with the idea. Balzac tells us that the Creator has used one and the same pattern for every organised being. The animals form a portion of the Infinite Spirit animating the universe. In contemplating and studying the inferior kindred of man, we feel a singular delight, which makes us descend into the lowest depths of the formation of our ego. We thus glide to the eternally young source of aged humanity. Whether it is the dog, the cat, the horse, or mere insects with their infinite variations, observing these affords treasures of enjoyment. Read again the touching chapters which lovers of the brute creation have devoted to their friends, the animals, and you will see, if you observe intelligently, to what an extent the life of a horse, a dog, a cat, a bird, is filled with thought, with duty, with joy, with love, all the attributes of the conscious life of man. The pages of Romanes, Lubbock, Darwin, or those of Magaud dAubusson reveal to us animals, birds, insects, rich in numberless attractions and endowed with an intelligence that is full of charm. Man thus discovers around him a series of groups living for his service, offering rare sensations to his soul, ever seeking something new, harmonious prospects which cast subtle rays upon the great shadow in which our future is

lost. How many examples of tenderness and of primordial virtues do we not encounter among the animals? The family affections, which we appreciate so highly in human beings, flourish equally among our inferior brothers. These animals even attain a degree of heroism. Whether mammals or fish, all offer us examples of the sublime love of parents for their offspring. Schweinfurth relates a curious incident of a female elephant, a typical incident in the animal world. Hunters, to capture her, set fire to the jungle. The anxious mother tried to save her little ones from the approaching fire. Constantly drawing water into her trunk, she threw it over the baby elephants; she covered them with her own body and uttered cries of despair when her efforts became futile. Seeley, Cuvier, LacepMe, and Valenciennes found similar virtues among the fish. The chromis, nicknamed paterfamilias, shelters the fertilised eggs in his jaws. Among the amphibia and the reptiles, if the female is the guardian of the eggs, the male is their defender. As for birds, Toussenel affirms, they have the sentiment of family and paternity more strongly implanted than has even man. Two species of paroquets do not survive their husbands. Who of us has not witnessed the heart-rending sorrow which seizes upon turtledoves that have lost their mates? Monogamy, so much admired among men, and so rarely practised, is found far more frequently among the animals. Darwin affirms that he has never observed cases of polygamy among the rodents or the insectivora. Even the common rats, w^hose reputation is so bad, have, according to many naturalists, only one companion. And if the lions give themselves up to polygamy, they are the only ones to practise it in the family of the carnivora.

Birds, ordinarily monogamous, become polygamous only when domesticated. This is also the case with ducks or wild geese, that afterward live in captivity. It is the rearing and domestication of animals practised by man that turn them aside from their family virtues. Lastly, what is to be said of the intelligence of animals! How charming is that quip of La Mettrie, asserting that if the brutes could talk, they would prove that there is no bigger fool than the human being. May they have the inclination to keep silent! But they do not speak. Yet who knows what the future has in store for us? The animals, according to Haeckel, are in the position of deaf-mutes who are unable to articulate their cries on account of an imperfection of their vocal cords. But since we know how to make these deaf- mutes speak, perhaps we shall succeed in educating also the animals. Then what a revolution there will be in the relations between organised beings! The miracles wrought by the sciences render this hypothesis plausible. But while awaiting its realisation, which will require a few dozens of centuries or of years, let us console ourselves by thinking of the infinite testimonials with which we are furnished by the relative observations of the affectionate and intellectual life of our inferior brothers. The world of plants and flowers! Do we know any delight more unusual than that which beautiful flowers afford to him who has learned to love them? How true is the page of La Bruy ere about the man who is satisfied with his day because he has seen beautiful tulips, or concerning the happy mortal who possesses a rare variety of plums! These flowers, at which we glance with an absent eye, enshrine

numberless and endless mysteries. The little withered rose which we fling to the winds is animated by problems of tremendous gravity. There are laws of floral architecture more exact and more implacable than those which govern our buildings. In the primary order, specialists tell us, the flower puts the five parts of a whorl upon a compact spiral, and this arrangement is made in such a manner that two turns of the spire receive the series of five parts. Plants developing under the influence of mathematical laws, what a world of enigmas of which our ancestors were wholly ignorant! We may add that they never had the opportunity to admire so many species of plants as we see in our days. The smallest garden plot of the workingman often contains more varieties, and more beautiful specimens, than the ancient gardens of the palace of Versailles. The modern man enjoys the plants more easily, loves them more, and also understands them better. The plants to our comprehending eyes are animated with a new life. We understand and admire their sensitiveness, which is almost equal to that of the animals. In watching the smallest plant w^e see it stirred by the cares of life. The plasmodium of a mucilaginous mushroom, placed upon a wet paper, draws into itself at once if the dampness evaporates. Moisten the paper, and the cryptogam will return. It will even ascend several millimetres if a bit of board covered with gelatine is placed there. ' But wet a piece of paper with salted water and the mushroom will avoid it, as an animal turns away from a disagreeable or dangerous food. When we see the mimosas defending themselves from the rapacity of herbivorous animals by folding back their leaves and simulating a dry, dead bush; the papillae of the Drosera seize as food the living insect;the leaves of the Dionsea {muscipula) close for

digestion when a bit of meat or egg is placed upon them, and remain open if a stone or a scrap of paper is put there, we feel moved by a sense of tenderness toward these mysterious existences blooming or fading around us. The artificial sleep to which plants are subjected and the forcing caused by this method, present numberless surprises to plant lovers, in the transformations produced in the vegetable world! Under Francis I. France possessed about fifty varieties of apples, she now has several hundreds. It is the same with other fruits, vegetables, or flowers. Where will this multiplicity of forms and qualities end? Mendel has demonstrated that, with three kinds of sweet-peas, each possessing a special characteristic which distinguishes it from the two others, eight perfectly stable types may be created, and afterward, through successive hybridations, twenty-seven more or less unstable forms. With four specimens, we reach the large number of thirty-two and eighty! We may add the spontaneous variations, such as Vries has formulated, and infinite horizons open for our delight. Have we not succeeded in altering the perfume of flowers and the flavour of fruits.as in the singular case of Sahlies, releasing the fragrance of magnolias, or producing apples with the taste of strawberries? Science, that worker of miracles, has reanimated the world of plants. In their beauty, long regarded as lifeless, it has recovered the soul of things. According to vegetable physiology, plants feel, act, and live. They even possess memory. Prudent, they work for the future. Notice a young plant that is placed between two sources of light. It will turn in the direction of the most intense, the most brilliant. And it stores the light it seeks, as man economises for days of need.

The difference which separates plants from men is often that of degree, not of kind. Certain botanists treat them with tender solicitude, like sisters sleeping in infancy. Be kind to them, and sweetness will flow into your own soul. We need not possess a garden or trees to enjoy the pleasures of plant life.' Nor is it necessary to possess a portion of the sky to enjoy its beauties.

VIII. If we lack love for or interest in our fellow-beings or the

humble brothers of our life, let us look within ourseJves. What a rich spectacle of unexpected sensations! A world is hidden in each individual. We are not, as the ancients believed, a single and indivisible being. We are multiple beings. Man varies, it is said. It would be more acciirate to say that men succeed each other within us. During the course of our existence, numerous persons have lived and died in every one of us. The child that is born does not resemble the being that he will become in five or six years. The lad is unlike the child, as the youth is unlike the lad. The man of mature years differs from the adult, as the old man differs from the one of middle age. When, on the threshold of death, we cast a glance backward, we are astonished to see that our moral and intellectual life has been only a successive passage of beings bom within ourselves. They were dear to us, because they formed a portion of our successive personality. Nevertheless, the spectacle of the simultaneous multiplicity of our being impresses us least. In the presence of deeds and crystallised sensations, we forget the causes which have given them birth as, in naming a battle, we neglect the obscure heroes by whom it was fought. Yet our conscience, nay, even the guiding ideas of our life, are often the fruit of a competition between the various beings which

constitute our ego. We will not go as far as Claude Bernard. This scientist was convinced that each spinal nervous centre was the seat of the principle which feels, understands, moves, and wills. Our egOj consequently, would be composed of millions of psychic individualities, graded from the encephalic ganglions and the elongated marrow to the lower end of the spinal tree. Let us be content with a few subconsciousnesses which lie, think, suffer, and rejoice in the depths of our ego.

IX. At the present day we know that there are within us at least two
or three psychical beings. The name, frequently unattractive, by which they are christened, such as subliminary or second consciousness, is of small importance. These double, triple, or even quadruple beingsas certain psychologists admitdwell within us, side by side. The desire to observe is enough to make their life burst forth before our eyes, luminous in its clearness and disturbing in its manifestations. Thus, in each one of us, different beings elbow each other. Their entirety forms our ego. It requires only a conflict of passions, an act of energy bringing contradictory motives into play, to enable us to perceive ,these various beings rushing forward and taking part in the fray. The more the passions clash against our acquired morality. the more evident this inward battle becomes. One might think it a duel between beings of flesh and blood fighting over a coveted prize. In the presence of the passionate love inspired by the wife of a friend dear to our heart, our second self suddenly awakes. With eloquence generous in its impetuosity, this second self w^ill show us the moral gulf to which our conduct is dragging us. Shocked and indignant at

the wiles of our desire, it will not even hesitate to overwhelm its rival with the utmost contempt. Whether victor or vanquished, it will struggle and will do its duty. Indefatigable, it will resist for months the invading passion. Often, bruised and exhausted, it keeps silence. But it will make its presence felt by the remorse which it will not cease to lavish. As victor it will be gentle. It will surroimd our moral hesitations with its solicitude. It will emphasise the benefits of triumphant duty and will labour for the entire perfection of the being of which it is only a simple emanation. The ancient Guebers saw the principles of good and evil, their Ormuzd and Ahriman, without. We behold these multiplied and living within ourselves. Try to observe the birth of the decisive actions of your life. Endeavour to surprise your passions red-handed in the act of inward strife, and you will readily perceive that behind the facts seen, there are facts more curious that are not seen. Few are those who feel within themselves the existence of these subliminal beings. But how numerous are those who hear the voice of their conscience and obey its summons!

X. We have within us certain dream companions. They are gay or

sorrov/ful. They are commonplace or lofty in character. They are often in harmony with our tastes and with the condition of our soul. We need only associate and talk with these and we shall improve ourselves while perfecting them. The man who has learned to converse with these subconscious beings will have within his reach pleasures which the society of human personalities could rarely afford. The return into ourselves, the contemplation of our own ego, seems

to constitute a part of the modern conscience. Follow the development of the literature of our day. Never, at any period, has our inner life played a similar part in letters. Whether it is the psychological, analytical, romantic, or even historical romance, the author will always try to delve into the souls of his heroes. What impresses us in the classic authors is the implacable and violent action which drags along, as if in a mad dance, fatality and its victims. Analysis, so dear to our modern mentality, seeks to conquer wider and wider domains over unconsciousness. The private journal and memoirs are at a premium. What constitutes their interest, unless it is the windows that they open to us upon the soul and upon souls? To see with what eager curiosity we follow the lives of others and shun our own ego, makes one think of a man who would desert his own children to interest himself in the fate of those who were strangers.

XI. The vvorld overflows with complaints of the wickedness of man.

Irony and distrust wound our sharpened, often even morbid, sensibility. Against the wounds of self-love, what shield is more efficacious than that of our inward life? In each one of us dwell what psychologists term our subconsciousnesses. Human negligence does not grant them even special names, which might facilitate the investigation of our ego.' The latter should thus be taught to turn them to account. In case of moral anguish, the support of the chosen being, of the subconsciousness that is best suited to assuage our sorrows, would more easily calm our apprehensions. For lack of a technical term, let

us say simply consciousness No. i, No. 2, or No. 3. The name is a trivial matter." When I think of the internal colloquies between these subconsciousnesses, a sort of tender emotion takes possession of me. I see under these silent conflicts between two, or often three, entities equally dear to my being, the formation of the guiding principles of my life. You smile, my friend. Laugh, if you choose, at the outbursts, but try this method notwithstanding. Enter your own personality. Try to witness, as a disinterested spectator, a battle between the passionate appeals of life, and your moral and religious principles. Listen to the voices of some, and the answers of the others. Note their successive arguments. Repeat the same experiment ten, fifteen, twenty times. A day will come when, charmed in your turn, you will be rapturously interested in the scenes of the life kindling or dying in the home of your ego.'

XII. Does not the pause before our consciousness, as we watch it

live, think, feel, enjoy, suffer, increase the intensity or the range of our existence? To lovers of life who complain of its brief duration, this contemplation affords an attractive means of soothing their regret. Our purely external life, too much absorbed in the worship of money, might perhaps find its balance in this mental pilgrimage. The soul and the mind would soften all the acerbity of the outward life, directed and inspired by desires and instincts for which we often blush and yet always endure. We pass close by the wealth scattered within and around us by the primeval force of things. We have more riches within our souls than

outside of our personalities. Everything depends on our desire to use this wealth. But, in many respects, we resemble the gold-seeker, who abandons the best veins to engage in a search for diamonds that are not to be found. The mission of education and of people of intelligence would be to check the unfortunate man in his foolish enterprise. We should point out to him the unappreciated treasures lying at his feet. Above all, we ought to open the eyes of those who, while closing them, weep because unable to see anything before and around them.

XIII. Plato had already discovered that the contemplation of pure

beauty gives value to life. Leonardo da Vinci sought in it consolation for the souls imprisonment in the body. Kant observes that the beautiful prepares us for loving something. Superior human beings have always drawn from beauty a state of ideal happiness. Modem education ought to render this happiness accessible to all. From the top to . the bottom of the human ladder, all should enjoy the divine music which fills the universe. Man has been taught many wearisome things. Why has he not been taught to look around him? Above all, why is he not taught to look within himself? To render this emotion accessible to all will bring to every one a fragment of this heavenly firmament which charms and attracts. Suffer life to be penetrated by it, and existence will become a work of art. We shall be tempted to establish harmony between our acts and to harmonise our acts with life. Beauty and happiness will find in this readjustment an equal share. The worship of the beautiful in nature suggests to us the worship of the good. A soul elevated and purified by the sight of the beautiful, becomes better. Above all, it becomes intolerant of the littlenesses

and meannesses of life. Moralists, and not the least important among these, for instance, Guyau, have desired to base morality upon beauty. According to these moral philosophers, Art should form an integral part of existence. Our joys ought to be joys of beauty. Passion for the beautiful has doubtless carried them too far. The impressions of beauty being only the result of individual sensations, one cannot see clearly how we could deduce from these a government of life, or a duty obligatory upon every one. Yet it is beyond question that if beauty reigned as sovereign of the world, goodness would become the co-director of human lives. Let us also teach man to enjoy the beauties hidden in the depths of his own being. Young people should be accustomed to make pilgrimages within their souls, as they are taken to external spectacles. What is poesy? It is not the art of singing in the moonlight, the hand quivering on an instrument of several strings. Nor is it the art of rhyming strange or harmonious words. Poesy is the power of our soul to raise itself above life and make it commune with the invisible genius or the visible beauties of nature. This poesy ought to be enjoyed by every one, for every one might feel its charm. We are born with a talent for garbing in beauty, with the pen or the brush, attractiv^c or ugly things. But all can delight in the joy and the beauty diffused throughout nature. All can be poets! The pedagogy of the future will toil to accomplish this ascent, and will labour, above all, to make the sons unlike their fathers. E.Religion and Religiousness (Happiness through Faith)

I. Faith is a supreme benefit to souls. Without it, life becomes

colourless, if not sad, and its interest vanishes. Indifference and

weariness invade our consciousness, gradually preparing a favourable soil for the growth of dissatisfaction. Life becomes a burden. We feel unhappy as a man would be who was condemned to remain in darkness. It is faith which triumphs over our troubles, our discouragements, our weaknesses. Faith adorns life by giving it an ideal; faith strengthens life by assigning it a purpose; faith also permits us to live our whole life, by promising to the dreariest existences joyous rewards as the crown of their efforts. Whatever may be its objectGod, native land, family, science, or humanity ^faith lends to life an intoxicating fragrance. A mind without faith is a cold and dismal abode, which hastens the destruction of whoever is shut within. The fate of faith, so strongly attacked on all sides, grieves our contemporaries, and renders them gloomy. Men have attempted to proscribe faith as opposed to the interests of real life; they have striven to assail it on the pretext that it is not in harmony with the scientific methods in force. Lastly, by identifying it with religion, those were detached who are not willing to walk in the ruts assigned by the churches. Flouted, humiliated, or abandoned, faith deserts our souls, and with it vanish all the enthusiasms which adorn and strengthen life. The religions themselves suffer from its absence, for instead of true believers, animated by faith, they often have as followers only calculators who accept religions as social necessities or political possibilities. But faith is one of the most living and dazzling sources of happiness. In the name of happiness we must emancipate faith from the guardianship of its enemies. Without it, life would become impossible. For what is duty itself, that

duty which sustains individuals, native lands, and mankind, religious men, and especially those who are not religious, except a mysterious, intangible article of faith, which dispenses with all reason and argument? Vainly do we analyse duty, vainly do we explain it; above all these explanations hovers, supreme, the faith which illumines it with its virtues. It is faith which procures for duty the stamp of inevitable necessity. Duty vanishes, if faith ceases to bear it company.

II. It is an error not to see in faith, under all its forms, a companion
of religion. Both are associated and become similar. Religion is impossible without faith, while all sincere faith is equivalent to a religion. Their objects may vary, but their essence is the same. Viewed from this standpoint, religion and faith become attributes of conscious man. Their various forms undergo radical modifications, but their elementary principle always survives. We cannot conceive a future human race without faith, as we do not think of the human race of the present day without religion. Religion and religions, as they develop, merge into a sort of religiousness, a domain of vague faith, where dogmas lose their distinct outlines and assume the form of indefinite aspirations. Faith and religiousness have always existed; religions are of more recent creation. Only in the train of Buddha, Confucius, Zarathustra, Moses, Jesus Christ, or Mahomet, did dogmatic religions appear. The so-called religions of Greece had no sacerdotal organisation. Neither had they obligatory dogmas. They knew and imposed upon the citizens merely external rites. The supreme deity of the Greek philosophers was simply reason. Aristotle placed Nature herself far below reason, which she could not equal. The Greeks lacked several conditions for transforming their mythology into a religion: a revealer, a sacred book, and a theological

system. No Greek had ventured to place himself, in the character of an intermediary, between Olympus and simple mortals; not one of them had written books under the dictation of the gods. Nor had Greece a special theology, codifying the priesthood, and the modes of worshipping the gods. The will and the caprice of individuals did not cease to regulate the rites. The religion of the Greeks was only an imagery of the poets. The genius of the latter had furnished its foundation and its ornaments. The attempts of the Pythagoreans to give Greek faith the more stable stamp of the revealed religions never attained any positive result. Greek credulity, free in its movements, only peopled with infinite variations the frames of the poems bequeathed by the ancestors. We scorn the past and hold the future cheap, if we consider the human race without dogmatic religion an impossibility. Let us trust the human soul. It is broader than all religions and deeper than all the philosophical schools. It shelters and creates these. Within its precincts all are merged and have their birth. The error of a religion or of a philosophical system does not imply error on the part of our soul. In its march toward the stars, the latter has surmounted all the fleeting crises of religions and of reason. The history of the relations of science and of reason are only one vast cemetery where lie buried the most opposite conceptions. The reason which incarnated science, and the relig'ous emotion which assumed the form of various religions, were sometimes melted into a single mass, sometimes separated into a system of dependence and equality, or in an open conflict, and were finally enclosed within a country with distinctly outlined frontiers. How many incongruous doctrines! How many dissimilar religions!

III. In the struggle of free thought against dogmas, the chances of

victory are not on the side of the latter. The conquests of science, popularised by the lay education that is rendered obligatory, are undermining more and more the dogmas of religion. Every one admits that religion is losing ground. Yet no one dares imagine that dogmas will return in their offensive aspects. Such an eventuality would appear illogical, as a movement backward. Religions, to exist, must make a compact with independent thought. But the latter, while spreading through the religious domain, destroys all its principal foundations. Belief in Paradise or in Hell, the essential tenets of all dogmatic religion, vanishes in proportion to the distance that science thrusts back the limits of the heavens, and increases the number of worlds. The man of the present day knows that the various species of animals living around us exceed two millions, and that the varieties of plants registered by the botanists attain a total of about three hundred and fifty thousand. Science has inflicted deadly wounds upon the childish pride of man. He no longer dares consider himself the only privileged being in the midst of the myriads of worlds and of beings, the greater part of which still escapes his comprehension. Convinced that the earth is only a drop of mud in the vast economy of the Universe, the modern man no longer poses as an only child of a divine combination. His boundless ambition turns from the heavens, which humiliate him. He seeks solace for his troubles upon earth, which smiles upon him more kindly. This tendency is becoming more marked. The religions which understand the advantages that the opportunity affords are opening their doors to their age-long adversary. Modernism, in all its forms, is penetrating the Church and the churches. Caught between two fires, the invasion from without and the revolution within, the rel gions are throwing out their ballast,

and ridding themselves of the elements which, after having made them live for centuries, could now only make them die. They are growing spiritualised, and thus drawing nearer to the religiousness which is and will be eternal.

IV. A regrettable confusion has been created between religion and

religiousness. Now the former is incomprehensible without a creed, a collection of dogmas forming a positive religion. Religiousness is only a special quality of our conscience. It aspires to lofty emotions, outside of all creeds, all dogmas. A man who professes no religion may have religiousness. It is futile not to be a Catholic, a Mussulman, or a Jew. We may, nevertheless, believe in the divine Reason of things, of which the human race is only a simple manifestation. The most sagacious scholars often hold this difference cheaply. In their bewilderment, they even ask science to become religious, and religion to become scientific. Thus Huxley tells us that true science and true religion are twin sisters and their separation would be the certain death of both. Science prospers so far as it is religious and religion flourishes in the exact proportion to the depth and the solidity of its scientific basis. True science, Herbert Spencer asserts, is essentially religious. Religion being based upon authority, and science upon free examination and experience, we do not readi'y understand the possibility and the advantages of their pairing. How are the two extremes to be reconciled? Above all, how are these two principles, which appear mutually to exclude each other, to be harmonised? By dint of having made a bad selection of the foundation of harmony, we are incurring the risk of incensing the two adversaries still more. Why not abandon them to the logic of their fate? Their antagonism is

reduced to the character of the spirit which animates them. There is a scientific spirit. There is also a religious spirit. Both reigning in different domains can continue to act there without mutually disturbing each other. The whole ques- tion lies therein, according to the fine remark of E. Boutroux: Does the scientific spirit which, in certain of its representatives, assumes the negation of the religious spirit, actually exclude it, or does it permit possibility to be substituted? If it is admitted that the relig'ous spirit, in its elevated expression, is only religiousness losing itself in the boundless empire of the eternal and insoluble mysteries, passing from the complexity of worlds and facts toward the Beyond which has disturbed and attracted us ever since man lived upon the earth, the response cannot be uncertain. Yes, there will be always a vast neutral zone. The philosophy of the religions will there encounter the philosophy of the sciences. Religious thought will there fraternise with philosophic thought in a sublime emotion of the Unknown, in its march toward the Unknown. For under the influence of modern mentality, the religious development which embraces all faiths, is more and more releasing moral principles and destroying dogmas and forms. It is doing more: it is tearing from dogmas their stamp of despotism and compelling them to put themselves in harmony with independent thought. Creeds and dogmas, in being modified, will move toward that religiousness^ in which the human race of the future will commime. It will scatter along its way the errors and superstitions which divide souls, retaining only the truths which bring them nearer.

V. Civilisation and social progress demonstrate the necessity and the

benefits of the union of human beings. The crossings of peoples and

of races are daily increasing. Science and literatures are becoming common property. International laws are widening their domain. Like the stamp of the postal union, there is a single thought dominating all the divergences of ideas and of interests. Religions, like all human institutions, must conform to the law of the living. They must submit, in the first place, to the conditions of existence that obtain in the surroimding environment. They will remain only by being in harmony with human thought and feelings. Far from working for the division of minds, they will strive for a closer connection. Religions will thus be able to coexist for a long time, side by side, in the presence of religiousness, which answers the needs of all men. Native countries will exist in the same way beside the human race, the common patrimony of all conscious beings. No doubt a day will come when in their turn the various alluvions of rites and dogmas which obscure the human mind will vanish. Then will burst forth in all its beauty the divine essence of all religions, religiousness, the universal and ineradicable principle. The eternal source, it has given birth to all the religions. In their turn, these may die, in the same place which gave them birth.
For lack of a more suitable word, we use the old term, religiousness, whose meaning has often been distorted and violated. Perhaps it might have been better to invent a new one, but the danger of being entirely misunderstood was greater than that of being insufficiently comprehended.

Thus will pass away the creeds and the dogmas, yielding their ground to religiousness, the domain of unutterable aspirations, common to all human beings. Nevertheless, it would be unfair to regard all the dogmatic religions as foes of our happiness. When they do not lower the minds of

believers by a degrading fanaticism, and base articles of faith, they exert a beneficent influence. To understand this reservation, it is sufficient to remember the state of savagery created in the past by certain religions. The present, in fact, is not free from this condition of things. Do we not see to-day the majority of the religions regulate the conduct of their followers on the bases of a double accounting with the Lord? With extraordinary irreverence, the Deity is reduced to the level of a moderately just man. Our acts are rated. They are rewarded or we are made to pay a penalty. The good graces of the Lord are bought with offerings and good deeds. After having sinned a long time, we become reconciled to Him by the aid of magic formulas or thanks to the intervention of his favourite ministers. While believing this, the disciple blushes when he is compelled to perceive the fact. This is much. The most cruel spectacles which the religions present to us are those of persecutions in the name of faith. But merely let the spirit of tolerance and human understanding penetrate the religious domain and it will suffice to render that domain a factor of serenity and happiness. Lovers of free and independent thought should not forget that, in striving to persecute religion and its believers, it would become still more odious than is religious fanaticism; for religions have excuses which free thought lacks. Lying beliefs, it will be said. Nothing justifies them. Let us reject them in the name of truth! Now, it is precisely philosophic truth which teaches us supreme caution. We know the errors of our knowledge. Its extent and its depth remove nothing from the fragility of its principles. Science does not cease to progress, but the paths through which it leads us are not always infallible. If in every truth

there is a portion of falsehood, in every falsehood there is a fragment of truth. From the scientific standpoint, nothing authorises the logic of the sectarian mind violently rejecting everything that is not in harmony with its comprehension.

VI. We forget the advantages which illusion often offers. Who would
dare to take upon himself the monstrous cruelty of telling a father who worships his child, that this child is the fruit of adultery? No matter if we do have incontestable proof, nevertheless we are silent. As regards the choice between the truth which would have crushed the heart of the man who was deceived, and salutary silence, doubt is impossible. The most upright man bows to the falsehood. He will even do what is necessary to fill up the fissures through which the truth might escape. After all, why snatch from man the possibility of seeing things as his happiness requires? Remember the example of Marcus Aurelius, the most virtuous of the Romans. Faustina basely deceived him. Her love affairs were numerous. The Empress chose them principally in the most despised professions, and scandalous rumours were current of her shame and her treacheries. Comedians publicly named Faustinas lovers, and Marcus Aurelius was pointed out as the most deluded of husbands. Yet the Emperor would hear nothing, would see nothing. To him Faustina ever remained the good and faithful wife. He benevolently shut his eyes. Gradually certainty returned to his soul. He no longer doubted his conjugal honour, for he believed absolutely in the virtue of her whom all Rome was loading with reproaches. The prayer which Ma.rcus Aurelius addresses to the gods on the banks of the Gran is delicious. He thanks them, in the sincerity of his soul, for having given to him a good, faithful, and affectionate wife.

How disturbing this good mans example remains! Why tear aside the veil which covers happiness if, when dethroned, it must give place to misery? We possess only the happiness which is felt, understood, above all, desired. Why rouse the dreamer when his dream, without injuring any one, affords him visible pleasure? Truth is divine in its essenceanother reason for not causing suffering in the name of truth. Another reason for not arrogating its exclusive possession. Yes, souls dear to our hearts live by illusions. Why snatch these illusions away? Science can continue its course freely, without striving to destroy the things which do not impede its path. It needs neither persecution nor proselytism. Its victories are invading contemporary mentality. By the natural force of things, they will eliminate from it all that is not in harmony with its precise truths. But spiritualistic philosophy is not incompatible with scientific method. Witness Pasteur, Darwin, and so many other scientists who are so imbued with religiousness.

VII. Dogmatic religions are also wrong in seeking to struggle against

lay morality. The latter takes the place of religious morality when the other weakens or disappears. Social harmony requires their mutual respect. Mankind can exist only upon moral foundations. Why discredit those of science and of experience, if a portion of the nation must live by these latter? In the same way it is dangerous to attempt to destroy religious morality if the ground is not ready to receive the seeds of the other form. Both have sufficient cause for mutual respect. Guyot justly says: The false, even the absurd, has always played so prominent a part in human affairs that it would certainly be dangerous to exclude it at any time.

On the other hand, free and independent morality is, after all, only a morality founded upon the social and moral interests of man. Its object is the happiness of the individual and of the community. Why then should we not feel disarmed in the presence of its fumblings, striving for our benefit, our happiness? Religions have only to consider the oceans of tears in which they have nearly drowned mankind to be indulgent toward the morality of the free thought which is endeavouring, in its turn, to guide the destiny of man. Whatever we may do, nothing will prevent the advent of a more and more rational morality, of a faith more and more freed from the artless or barbarous notions which are so far beneath the man of our times. The essential thing is that the evolution should take place without causing useless sufferings. The atheism of the present day, to tell the truth, is but a word. A cultivated man can no longer proclaim himself an atheist according to the ancient definition. He can no longer deny the influence of the forces which escape him and the principles that he ignores. He is distinguished from believers only because his belief shows him a different tenor. But the atheist, also, cannot exist without a faith, without a certain religiousness in harmony with the explanation which we have given above. A man who has never drunk from the springs of science or one who has appropriated from them merely superficial ideas, can boast of being an ardent and positive materialist. But the man who, in good faith, has striven to penetrate the essential points of modern science, can no longer remain in harmony with either atheism or materialism in their absolute meaning or in the one attributed by the common people. There is a universal law which rules the entire cosmic world. It destroys our faith in matter. It concerns the sovereign law of gravitation. The

myriads of- worlds surrounding us, including the hundred and twenty millions of stars revealed to our wondering eyes by the perfected telescopes, almost all these stars controlling worlds often far larger than our solar system, nevertheless are held only by an ideal, spiritual, and invisible power. How do all these worlds maintain their positions, and perform their functions in consequence of immaterial forces and laws whose bearing and signification, though misunderstood by us, nevertheless remain real? When we descend from metaphysical heights and return to the domain of positive morality, the atheists find themselves singularly near to all sincere believers. The supreme end of all morality, based upon religion, or deprived of the divine idea, is always the same. Love, and make yourself beloved, there is nothing above this principle. A Christian writer, not one of the least important, justly shows far more sympathy with the atheists than with the believers animated by an automatic faith, for the former have an ardour of belief, a fierce love of justice and of truth which the second lack. This is the very reason, M. Monod has told us, that modern atheism does not cease to be religious. Victor Hugo explained before Wilfrid Monod ^ that he who did not believe in God, one and triune, listening to harps, jealous and vengeful, was nevertheless a true believer, while the priests who taught God were atheists. And, for the reason that the man who desires and works for justice, is a religious man. An atheist, to use the term as generally applied, would therefore be wrong to incriminate the aims of a religion that leads the simpleminded toward the heights attained by the elect of lay thought, just

as true believers would commit a serious error against the higher interests of humanity by attacking in any way, except by persuasion, the deep and painful sorrowful convictions that deprive certain anxious and troubled souls of all repose in beliefs. Sincere faith, moreover, has for its inevitable counterpart no less sincere doubt. The salvation of religious faith lies in the reciprocal tendencies these two antinomies have to combat. The radiance of faith would pale singularly if it could not be opposed to incredulity. The latter, in its turn, draws its strength from the shock it receives from the ardours of faith. The beneficent balance of mankind requires the coexistence of these two factors. Their time-honoured and inevitable companionship renders reciprocal tolerance possible and necessary. Persecutions and martyrology have never been able to destroy the development of the free mind, but no jeering at dogmas will everconquer the need of faith in our hearts.
Wilfrid Monod, Aux croyants et aux athees.

which masters in the same degree a believer and a sceptic, a religious and an irreligious man. Both are aiming, after all, toward justice and happiness. Some are content with desiring to render the world a paradise, while others rejoice in possessing that of the world beyond. Thus they have in common one ideal and one faith that of making our existence nobler. We need only purify faith and elevate scepticism, and both methods will meet more and more in common aspirations toward a more and more lofty and intense happiness. The best among those who deny or affirm are labouring for the same God

of justice and happiness whom they call by different names. This similitude of life and of work asserts itself from the very beginning of religions and of free thought. Taine states that Christianity, after eighteen centuries of existence, is now working in the same way among the Russian moujiks and the American settlers, as it did formerly among the artisans of Galilee, in striving to substitute for love of self, the love for others. Its essence, examined through this vast region, has not changed. Beneath its Greek, its Catholic, or its Protestant envelope, it is still to four hundred millions of human creatures the spiritual organ, the majestic pair of wings which are indispensable to raise man above himself. Free thought, summed up in the vast lines of its evolution, expresses at the end of several thousands of years, the same guiding thought. This thought aims to render man superior to his instincts. The science which develops outside of religion has for its object only to furnish in its turn, and at its expense, another pair of beneficent wings to raise man above his pitiable and miserable condition. The doctrine, the pedagogy, and the morality of happiness are ready to furnish a common basis for all religions and all sincere and disinterested aspirations. Within their bosom all the flagrant or hidden contradictions which appear to separate them are found to be levelled. The aspiration to that lofty happiness which, being of altruistic essence, alone is deep and lasting, realises for that very reason the love for our neighbour that constitutes the indispensable and inevitable ideal of all the religions and of all the social and laical doctrines worthy of this name. Modern incredulity, as well as modern atheism, is distinguished from

those of the past. The most positive rationalists now admit the existence of spiritual needs and eternal aspirations toward the infinite. The most convinced among them have undergone the fate of Faust, of all the Fausts whom humanity sheltered during the ages. They have discovered the need of their souls to turn, at some given moment, toward the mysteries, toward the noumena that lies hidden beneath each phenomenon. Below their reason, they perceive this whole vivifying layer of the sub-conscience which feeds and maintains the inner life to its fathomless depths, whence come to us the most spontaneous of our intuitions and of our creations. Absorbed by anxieties or by our daily troubles, we forget its existence. But, having returned within ourselves, we gaze, troubled or marvelling, at this domain of limitless frontiers from which rises in beauty a mysterious force. There also lies for us the source of religious emotions. Their foundation is the same, but their names vary. Nevertheless we endeavour to raise an impassable barrier between the believers and the atheists by opposing their doctrines relative to survival. Undoubtedly there is nothing more delightful to the human consciousness than the idea of survival. Under its rudimentary forms, it appears with the first rays of the awakening of our intellect. But an insurmountable abyss also separates, in this domain, the ancient notion of immortality from that of our own times. The simple-minded men of ancient days were empirical. Therefore they believed in the reality of symbols, in the actual life of images and of names. The doll that rudely represents the human features has its own life.

In this quality, it can be sacrificed to the gods. The names that people bore also had a real existence. When they disappeared from the memory of men those whom they were supposed to incarnate vanished in their turn. The great reformer of Egypt, Amen-Hotep IV, wishing to destroy the divinities of his country, destroyed first of all their statues and the names inscribed upon these. The iconoclasts, who amaze us to such a degree, were only logical people. They acted in conformity with the ideas of their times. On that very account the future life was limited to the duration of the images or of the memory left among the living. Thus the negroes believed in the life beyond the grave of their father, whose deeds and movements they remembered, but they did not believe in that of their ancestors of whom they v/ere entirely ignorant. Whoever has his name spoken, lives, and if another sees that you are doing this for me, he will also do it for you, runs an inscription found upon the temple of Horus at Edfu. ^ The future life consists in a brutal and material prolongation of life here on earth. Imbued with these materialist conceptions, the ancients saw in immortality merely the continuation of the terrestrial existence. Only, exhausted by fatigue, that of the other world became a pallid image, lacking warmth and love, a life of shadow. This is why the Greeks, in spite of the varied appearances which they had succeeded in grafting upon the primitive idea of death, had no inclination for existence beyond the grave. The typical saying of Achilles, that he would rather be the slave of a poor man on earth than to reign over a kingdom in the other world, incarnates all the fears and all the hopes of the Greeks. Our ideas of immortality have changed greatly with the course of time. How numerous have been the lofty additions that render it

more spiritual, especially more desirable. The soul being no longer identical with the body, and the mind being independent of space, immortality is emancipated from the infirmities and the decrepitude of our material envelope. Again attached to the system of our mind it hovers above our religious conceptions, and even displays an infinite variety of forms beneath which it takes shelter. But all these forms have the same purpose, which consists in diminishing our sufferings here on earth, and in opening to our hopes infinite horizons.
See among others: Ranke, Zeifschrifi fiir Aegyptische Sprache und Alterthums-Kunde, 1907; Maspero, " La religion egyptienne,* Revue de I'htstoire d.s religions (6th year), etc.

The spiritualisation of the essence of immortality renders the conciliation of doctrines more and more easy. Yet we should do wrong to seek to impose it as a simple dogma. Faith in immortality, as well as its favourite form, is only the product of our personal consciousness. Mankind has dispensed with them for ages. The loftiest consciences succeeded in existing without the aid of faith in immortality, as the most admirable and the most moral men will be able to develop without its assistance. We may cite a thinker like John Stuart Mill, who was at the same time the most honest of men, to whom the idea of eternity was even odious. He tells us that, in a higher and especially a happier existence, it would not be annihilation, but immortality, whose idea would become unbearable. The man who is well satisfied with the present, and in no haste to leave it, would nevertheless be sincerely distressed by the thought that he was chained through eternity to a life which he would not be sure of desiring always to retain.

The more and more strongly marked variety of doctrines and their emancipation from the ruder articles of faith, when these are not in harmony with the elementary data of good sense and of knowledge, have resulted in softening the English who, in former times, separated the atheists from the believers. A closer connection, based upon a reciprocal understanding, is also showing itself in this domain among fair-minded men. True believers are permitting themselves to be influenced more and more by Reason, as sceptics and atheists are affected by the spiritual sides of our aspirations and of our life. The new conceptions of the infinitely great and of the infinitely little, which fill all the exact sciences, have singularly broadened the horizon of our ideas. The infinite has entered into our calculations, occupying our visions, and for that very reason, animating our hopes. Our most intelligent ancestors, in many respects, had the ideas of the simple-minded men of our days. The geographical or astronomical notions of the ancient Greeks would make a schoolboy ten years old smile. We see much more broadly, and much farther. In proportion as our imagination widens its vision, boundless regions open before it. By the aid of several units formerly unknown, we measure and weigh the phenomena of the solar world. Thanks to the micron, that is, the thousandth part of a millimetre, or to the light-year, that is, the distance which light traverses in a year (its speed per second, however, is three hundred thousand kilometers), we are trying to attain through our imagination the extreme frontiers of the real, and we thus obtain singularly disturbing facts. Our pen mechanically records them, but our powerless brain refuses to understand them and to grasp their immensity.

Think, for instance, that the distance traversed by the light which reaches us from one of the stars that is nearest to our earth is equal, during a single year, to about ten thousand thousand millions of kilometers. The number of drops of water contained in all the seas of the globe, is estimated by oceanographic science at about thirteen hundred millions of cubic centimeters. Let us try to decompose this figure. A cubic centimeter contains a thousand millions of cubic meters, and a cubic meter, in its turn, contains a thousand million cubic millimeters. Our imagination pauses in consternation. Yet the matter in question concerns only our own planet, a mere drop of water or mud in the economy of the universe. Here is another example: It has been discovered that infinitesimal quantities of metallic salts corresponding to a ten milHonth of a milligramme per quart still act upon lactic fermentation. Now, in a quart of fermenting milk, there are about a hundred thousand millions of cells. The result is that we have to deal with fractions of grammes in which there would be twenty-five noughts! The boldest calculation dares not approach certain operations. Vertigo or utter lack of comprehension thus brings our reflections to a close. So the idea of the infinite is deepened and broadened in every direction. As fast as our comprehension embraces more and more impenetrable horizons, it finds itself compelled to admit experimentally the reality of incomprehensible forces and the existence of an unknown Power, whose grandeur and whose depth, surpassing the most stupendous resources of our intellect, command Faith, because in their indefinite form, they arise only from our

Faith. Behind the inconceivable world of the present, there lies one still more inaccessible to our mind, the world of yesterday, the world of incalculable ages already past and of incalculable ages to come. Bottomless, boundless gulfs are waiting on all sides for the thought which would fain venture into their depths. The combinations of worlds and of phenomena realised, in process of realisation, or in view of being realised, exceed even the power of our figures. We imagine with difficulty a magnitude attaining fifty figures side by side in a line. Let us think, for example, that the entire mass of the earth expressed in kilogrammes of its weight does not exceed twenty-five figures and the number of drops of water contained in all the seas about thirty. Now, the probability of combinations of forces and of the phenomena of nature probably surpasses thousands of millions of figures. I have calculated elsewhere the different ways of seating guests around a table. The placing of twelve persons can give occasion for five hundred million combinations; that of fourteen presents ninetyone thousands of millions, and the seating of fifteen,
1,350,000,000,000.

But nature presents myriads of elements. What would then be the number of possible combinations? We can answer again only by the Infinite. The Infinite, which outstrips all the possibilities of our comprehension and consequently our ideas, our dreams, and our aspirations. This Infinite imposes itself upon our Faith, because it imposes itself upon and pervades our Reason. Call it: Jupiter, Jehovah, Providence, Nature, God the Father, or

Force. What does that matter! The point in question is always a simple Faith. No human intellect can cast it out, and the more reflective, the more scientific it is, the more it will believe, and the more it will be imbued with this Faith. The Unknowable or the Mysterious which guides the believers also guides the scientists. More impatient in his deductions, the believer stops midway. He puts a period where the scientific searcher places only a comma. His sentence is finished, his horizon is narrowed, because he has set at the end of his anxieties a series of dogmas. The seeker continues to work, though knowing in advance that the mystery thrust farther into the distance will not cease on that account to be a mystery. The Infinite not closed is the free or emancipated mind, is our spirituality more and more purified and elevated. The problem of our Intellect is thus identified with the problem of the Infinite. With man thus grown loftier, mystery finds itself more honoured, for it transports and accompanies us into the infinity of the suns, into the infinity of thought, into the infinity of hopes, into the boundless divinity that fills the world and our destinies. As man forms a portion of the universe, in his turn he is deified and immortalised. He will undergo the fate of the universe, the fate of the God-Force which completely penetrates him. Into the undefined and limitless Faith of the man of science returns the narrowed Faith of the man of dogmas. As the forest incorporates the trees which compose it, so philosophical or scientific Faith expresses the multiplicity of religions and of crystallised dogmas. Moreover: All the shades of the religions termed positive or revealed mingle in this general one, as the waters of the rivers disperse in the

ocean. The atheism of former days has lost its cause for existence. It has come to die on the threshold of the belief in the Infinite, or if we prefer, of the Great All, of the Great Force, or of the Great Mystery. With progress, dogmatic faiths having softened their angles and brought their dogmas into harmony with the modern conscience, will end by being, in their turn, summed up into a more and more vague and ideal faith. They will lose their stamp of concrete affirmation and assume the common tonality of the faith that animates all thinking beings. Dying atheism and vanishing religious fanaticism are only the prelude of that triumphal symphony of the human Faith of the future, which will be summed up in the same awe of and the same longing for the Infinite. Then there will be little regard for the accessories ' which divide revealed religions from the one established by the study and the observation of the universe. True science confines itself to proclaiming the spirituality of faith, but the believer seeks to materialise it and incarnate it under forms accessible to his mind. The characters find themselves singularly reversed. The religious man is thus becoming a materialist, and the man of science remains an idealist. This result, apparently paradoxical, singularly illumines the recriminations and the quarrels which separate the two camps, and preaches to them the necessity of a mutual understanding that will be more just, for while the crust that surrounds their souls appears to distinguish them, a core of Faith nevertheless unites them, under the banner of the Unknown, the supreme object of their aspirations which they do not cease to have

in common.

VIII. History is only an incessant tradition. We pass from certain

conditions of moral and material existence to other moral and material conditions. This change constitutes the essence of progress, and we easily accommodate ourselves to it, when the passage is made in an imperceptible manner. But there are also acute crises. Under an inward pressure of events, we rush in all haste toward new quarters. This change startles peaceful souls. Misoneism, or hatred of innovation, sleeps unsuspected in the human mind. Awakened, it defends itself by all the means within its reach. We shut ourselves up in the old abodes; we replaster the walls; we even stuff the holes through which the new light threatens to filter. More conciliatory occupants, on the other hand, try to repaint their dwellings in conformity with the taste of the day. These are the epochs of great and small revolutions. Consciences are darkened. They vainly seek their way. The conflict sharpens minds and renders them hateful and implacable. Gradually the light breaks forth, for truth has a peerless power of penetration. Thus it is that monarchies accept the intervention of the people in the government, and religions that of reason in the dogmas. Is it necessary to drag recalcitrant spirits by force toward the new abode? For what purpose if the house, irremediably condemned, must, sooner or later, be vacated? A struggle to the bitter end could only increase the suffering. Let us permit minds to work freely, and progress to operate by the power of truth. Let us preach calmness and reconciliation; for human passions are in

any case doing and will do their work. They are hastening the imminent victory of ideas, by suffering. It is the part of noble minds to lessen the extent and the bitterness of this suffering, for tolerance, that sensible patience, is the exclusive virtue of sages.

IX. Everything tends to the belief that these struggles will be made
more and more under conditions of mutual esteem. Indulgence, the natural fruit of comprehension will soften all extravagance in the ardour of the combatants. It will console the vanquished and will teach the victors comprehensive kindness. The most representative champions of free thought have themselves given examples of moderation. Kant has not ventured to place his categorical imperative* outside of the future life. Like a simple Savoyard vicar, remarked Paul Stapfer, he concluded that the harmony between virtue and happiness, not being realised here below, must be offered to our hope in heaven. Ernest Renan jeered at the illusions of independent morality. By dint of chimeras, he tells us, we have succeeded in obtaining from the good gorilla a surprising moral effort. But he did not see how, without the ancient dreams, we could succeed in rebuilding the foundations of a noble and happy life. It is necessary to maintain, he tells us elsewhere, in addition to the fatherland and the family, an institution from which the soul may receive nourishment, consolation, counsels, an institution where may be found spiritual teachers, a director: that institution is the Church. The virus of the seminary probably speaks through the lips of Renan. His imagination, nourished by the intoxicating charms of the Church, did not conceive of life without its aid. Without it, he asserted, life would become dishearten- ingly arid, especially to women. Herbert

Spencer sought salvation in the reconciliation of religion and science. Spencers illusion is that of the great majority of thinkers of every age. It is easily explained. We may note first that the origins of science and of religion appear to be the same. Both owe their birth to the reaction of the world upon our minds, our souls; both have for their object principles which are incomprehensible, unknowable, and beyond the range of thought. Religion has the absolute; science has, among other things, space and time. The history of philosophy is only a series of efforts aiming to realise the harmony between science and religion. From the Greeks, who believed that they perceived the same divine reason working in both domains, passing by the scholastic doctrines, which preached the identity of their objects and their methods, and ending with the philosophers of our own times, who believe in the inevitable harmony between science, the product of intelligence, and religion, the product of feeling, how many schools and thinkers have been toiling to prepare, to explain, and to realise the friendly harmony between the two! Yet this harmony is far from being concluded. August Comte^s effort is doubtless one of the most characteristic. In wishing to make religion the crown of science, and to erect its proud and powerful kingdom opposite that of science, he has only narrowed the limits of both. Religion and science come forth singularly disfigured and curtailed. Their boundaries are found to be arbitrarily violated and marked. Science sees itself delivered over to the domination of emotion,, and sinks to the level of a province conquered by religion. As to religion, it becomes in its turn the victim, if not the slave, of mankind, a condition which to Comte is the gauge and the end of everything. A poor wandering shade, it goes from the actual to the

useful, and from the useful to the actual, the heaven and the promised land of positivist philosophy.

X. Nearer to us, William James, with his pragmatist doctrine or

religious experience, has also tried to realise this harmony. He has advanced farther than his predecessors. Does he not claim for religions the character of a science? Knowledge dictated by the heart has for him the same weight as knowledge resulting from experience. After all, religion is also an experience. Aided by a warm and ingenious dialectic, James is trying to identify feeling, the subjective principle of the religions, with scientific experience, from which personality is banished. Do not mathematicians study the same facts by the path of infinitesimal calculus, and that of geometrical analysis?^ Why, asks James, can we not study the phenomena which surround us by both the scientific and the religious methods? The American philosopher forgets that a scientific demonstration means the demonstration of a truth visible to and comprehensible by all who are placed under the same conditions. A religious experience or truth always remains personal. Admitting their objectivity, it would be necessary, at the same time, to banish the sacred principles of tolerance. Religious truth having become impersonal, having become an objective truth, it would be necessary to impose it upon every one. We should not have, however, the right to respect the socalled asserted truth or the falsehood of the others. Now, what saves religious experience, if experience there is, is precisely that, being the product of feeling or of individual sensation, it is not demonstrable. It binds the person who sees it in a certain way, without disturbing the repose of his neighbours.

James, however, believes that he has found in it a true scientific basis. By relying upon the subliminal self, that second consciousness, which, according to Myers, would be possessed by every human soul (the double), he declares that man, thanks to this supplementary consciousness, finds himself in relations with another world and other beings superior to those we have before our eyes.And this sphere of action, thus based upon a positive (?) fact, would be reserved for religion. We see how unscientific is this science. The phenomena described by Myers also show not infrequently and very distinctly the traces of pathological disturbances. The most significant ones cited by the author of Human Personality enter the category of the facts observed by psychologists, under the name of psychological automatism. This automatism does not create new syntheses; it is only the result of a psychic activity which had already existed, and by which it is almost always accompanied. Many phenomena which kindle the imagination of James have been recorded and studied by the alienists. We do not yet know them very well and, at any rate, not sufficiently to entrust to them the direction of the religious sovereignty." Nevertheless, William James continues to confuse the modernists and a large portion of the intellectual youth of both continents. His doctrine preaches to souls the beauty and the truth of the integral life by which the modem conscience is assauged. He attracts by his quasi-scientific varnish and disarms by his ardent desire to diffuse peace and happiness through religion. But pragmatism will soon cease to act, like intoxicating music which, after having deeply stirred our hearts, vanishes without leaving any recollection.

Let us recall this fact, many times confirmed. While scientists and philosophers such as Richet, Lombroso, or Myers, set out from spiritualism in search of the multiple ego, psychologists also reach it in a direct line by studying natural or artificial somnambulism; physicians by examining neuropaths and hysterical persons, and alienists, disaggregation of the personality. The morbidness and the mystery accompanying it are thus invading the field of the subliminal consciousness. It is becoming hazardous, from the scientific standpoint, and unseemly from the religious one, to seek to erect a scientific religion upon ground so uncertain.

XI. The more we reflect upon so many abortive attempts, the more
we perceive the futility of these efforts. Men have desired to reconcile irreconcilable things. Religions, born of an eternal necessity of the soul, remain unassailable, so long as they are enclosed within its bounds. Religions in a state of religiousness have nothing to fear and nothing to expect from science. Transformed into dogmatic religions, they undergo necessarily the dangers of the religious evolution. After having grown through the centuries and having wandered through the world, the dogmatic religions, urged by dogmas and rites, will return toward their cradle, and, sooner or later, will be merged into the religiousness which gave them birth. Science will then have only to bow before the principles which animate them and the domain which naturally remains closed. There will be no need of preaching harmony. It will take shape through its own volition, and nothing will have power to disturb its reign. From that time, the dogmatic religions and science can live in a union cf reason and interest, independent of any theoretical attempt to reconcile their irreconcilable principles.

XII. When a reflective mind confronts all these doubts, it

understands the injustice of persecuting the ancient dogmas. However erroneous they may be,'they have been mans companions

for ages. They have cost him much suffering, but they have procured him many joys. Perhaps they have done more: they have produced the truths of which he is so proud. Like the aged parents whom advanced age has rendered insane or imbecile, they have a right, nevertheless, to our respect. We no longer listen to their .counsels, we liberate ourselves from their government, but it would be unjust to ill-treat or scornfully cast them aside. After all, death is their fate and their right. When the fruit attains maturity, nothing can prevent it from leaving the tree which it burdens by its presence. The rising sap of science and of good sense thus avoids the necessity of torturing the branches bending under the weight of the absurd. Let us be indulgent to the old prejudices or the dying dogmas, and let us open our souls to the new truths; let us be respectful to the religions which are passing and place confidence in the religiousness which will some day replace these. The times are close at hand when mankind, united in religiousness, will draw from it reasons for peace and happiness. For the dogmatic religions are disintegrating. To see how far they can go, it is only necessary to observe the spirit of renewal by which they are animated. The moral progress must be discounted, not by unity of years, but by unity of generations. When we think of the aspirations which have stirred all the organised denominations, since the first Congress of Religions, we believe ourselves authorised to make the boldest conjectures. Yes, the religions are losing more and more, along the path of their evolution, the dogmas and the rites which keep them apart. They are purifying and deifying themselves in moving toward religiousness, the common domain of all men who cannot and will not dispense with questioning nature concerning those things upon which science will

probably never explain.

XIII. We may sum up as follows:

What is religiousness? It is reduced to the indefinite relations between our personality and the infinite. Religiousness is necessarily individualistic. Refusing to be fettered by dogmas or rites, religiousness admits neither church, nor doctrine, nor priesthood. In its bosom, vast as that of the universe, may meet in mutual respect all souls that are conscious of the eternal mystery and that are in relation with the Infinite. The purport of these relations is nothing, the primordial fact of their existence is everything. I Religiousness is in harmony with all the sincere religions, which, insensibly, merge within its boundaries. Religiousness is in every religion. We can move the feet without running, but we cannot run without moving the feet. It is impossible to be really religious without having religiousness, but we may have religiousness without being affiliated with any religion. Thus understood, religiousness will contribute to the happiness of thinking men of the future, as it now procures happiness for the thinking men of our own times. We have some difficulty in imagining our future under this aspect. A humanity whose members will not make each other mutually suffer and bleed on account of the difference in their religious feelings, appears inconceivable. Such a condition of things would undoubtedly mark the approach toward a real golden age. This eventuality surprises us the more because we believe wrongly that the Golden Age lies behind instead of before us. Yet human endeavours would be inconceivable, if not stupid, did we not advance toward a happiness ever greater and more intense. Our sorrows, our conflicts, and our sufferings are paving the way for the birth of a new man. Like the

bronze which appears in beauty amid the flames and refuse of the casting, religiousness, we do not doubt, will disengage itself, pure and majestic, from the age-old clutch of dogmas and religions.

XIV. Religions may thus grow weaker. They may even disappear,
but religiousness, that is, the aspiration toward the things which are not always of this world, will remain the eternal companion of the thinking being. The thirst for the ideal is inherent in man, and a normal soul cannot dispense with it, any more than a normal body can live without a certain quantity of oxygen. Man, according to Boutroux, is a very peculiar being who aspires to surpass himself. He will return to the path of religiousness when he seriously aims to do so. That which facilitates this ascent outside of ourselves and far beyond the limits of our body, is the soul, the intellect, a force that bestows more than it contains, restores more than it receives, and gives more than it has," said Bergson in his turn. We place in juxtaposition these two affirmations emanating from the two leaders of contemporary philosophy for the express purpose of showing how unanimous are the influential minds of the present day in justifying the aspirations and the solid foundation of our religious speculations. Philosophical materialism has itself become idealistic. Matter without mind is no more conceivable than the body without the living soul. We are understanding more and more that the divine kingdom lies within us. Like all the genuine sources of happiness, it is at the disposal of the entire world. The human conscience, broadened and deepened, opens to us the paradise of which we have so long dreamed. We are perceiving better and better that we all hold within

us divinity, as divinity embraces us all. The fish swimming in the sea have the sea in themselves. We live in divinity, and a god dwells in us all. There are souls that vegetate or slumber, and this god also remains slumbering in the depths of their consciences. But we need only have a thinking soul to see within that soul a god. Let us respect him in others, in order that the one in us may be respected. This is the essential condition of the peaceful evolution toward happiness through religiousness, the common and natural shelter of all human consciences.

A Few Catechisms of Happiness

I. The reception was a most brilliant one. Around the hostess, whose
drawing-room was noted as the gathering-place of all whom Paris numbered as celebrities in the domain of literature and of art, there were grouped, on this evening, several men of much renown in the world of intellect. Heaven and earth,incidentally Paradise,were being discussed. It was a regular tilt of swift repartees, witty sayings, subtle comments. A tinge of pleasant malice, under a varnish of toleration, dominated this tournament. A young man, striving to attract attention, uttered several clever witticisms. His musical voice and lively remarks won universal approval. Where did he come from ? What does he do ? ' He had received point-blank the most expressivebecause silent flattery, and his desire to shine, to emerge from obscurity, was aroused. His eloquence, lashed by his first successes, made him take giddy leaps. He did not notice the weariness of his listeners, the amused faces of his rivals. Gradually, recovering his senses, he perceived that the game was lost. By a few new turns, he tried again to win the battle. But the charm was broken. Fifteen minutes later, the brilliant minds were gathered in another corner of the drawingroom. One felt in the surrounding atmosphere the anguish of a destiny on the eve of extinction. A growing reputation had just been laid to rest. Before our eyes had been unfolded one of the numerous little dramas

of the drawing-room. They have their profound melancholy and their deep sadness. Well-poised minds will express doubt over an incident unworthy of stirring their sensibility. Yet nothing, in itself, is either great or small. All depends upon our own conception of things. In the eyes of this whole little world, the point in question was an irremediable catastrophe. The victim was suffering. His face was contracted with pain, and his eyes were dimmed. We left the company together. The unfortunate fellow walked with drooping head. He was humbled and prostrated, like a gambler who has lost his last stake. How sparkling your mind is! I said to him. He looked at me doubtfully. Was he dealing with a malicious joker, or a benevolent connoisseur? People are always connoisseurs, when they know how to appreciate our gifts and talents. I held out my hand to him. Yes, I said, you have a remarkable intellect. But it has one defect. It does not seem to be aware of the eloquence of silence. If, after having delighted the company, you had known how to listen and to admire the others, your triumph would have been assured. The true conversationalist is the man who knows how to listen. When he adds to this the gift of being able to say a few sensible words, he becomes irresistible. Months and months elapsed. One morning I received this little note: I have profited by your advice. I appreciate the power of silence. I no longer make useless efforts. I attend patiently to the chatter of others. They like me immensely. I say little. This permits me to weigh my words, and wins the praises of all those to whom I listen.

In fact, X is now considered one of themost brilliant men in the capital. I have reflected a great deal upon the bearing of this trivial incident. How many times have we not witnessed the spectacle of people eagerly destroying their own interests? The chatterboxes everywhere form the enormous majority. All contribute their utmost to render the society of men by no means enviable. Yet it is not always a physiological necessity to talk which causes the various torments of people. Most frequently, it is the invincible necessity of pleasing. Why have we not been taught the advantages of silence?

II. The most insignificant fruits of experience on the tree of our

knowledge are piously culled. Why, in the domain of morality, are the woes and disappointments of our ancestors left unutilised? These lessons, crystallised into a condensed form, and constantly placed before our eyes, would perhaps end in changing our nature. Sublime magic of words! In any case, they might spare us many errors and many tears. The religions have always reduced their wisdom into morsels. But the religious formulas, too far removed from life, principally affected those who had retired from it. The human beings near at hand must have the honey of actual life, which could and ought to be utilised under all circumstances.

III. We desire to render productive the blood shed by soldiers upon

the field of battle. We wish to be reimbursed for the losses occasioned by war. What is life except the continual battle of men against fate? An eternal conflict. Begun hundreds of thousands of years ago, it will end only with the disappearance of the last survivor of the human

race. Let us make the victors speak. Let us listen to the groans of the wounded and of the dying. In the vast cemetery of the past rest the secrets of the happiness of the future. For experience always costs too dearly. We should err in wishing to have it encompass our life. That would be like desiring merchants to acquire the secrets of success at the cost of great losses or successive failures. A ship captain does not learn his profession in a series of shipwrecks. Certain experiences even deprive us of the possibility of deriving profit from them. It is not always easy to make those who are gone interpose. So let us also listen to the living, and draw from their tears and their smiles, their disappointments and their triumphs, a few guiding ideas. Above all, do not let us lose our own joys, but through the ashes and the rust with which circumstances cover our souls, let us allow them to speak. Pausing before the waves which are bearing it away, let us hearken to the voice of life. Solemn and musical, it points out how to avoid tortuous and deceptive paths. Perhaps it will also indicate the easiest ascent toward success. The catechism, or rather the catechisms of life! The catechism of physical health! The catechism of intellectual and moral health! The catechism of success! The catechism of happiness! Fruits of the wisdom and of the thought of others, they would permit us to use the tears and the joys of our neighbours for the benefit of our own future. How many flowers are culled in the great garden of our existence! We do wrong to let them fade and perish. It would be so easy to enjoy their intoxicating fragrance, which is released under the action of destiny as is the perfume of the flowers under the breeze of the night.

IV. We know the beautiful answer of a mediaeval theologian, who

had been asked to define the essence of religion while he was balancing on one foot. Love your neighbour as yourselves, he replied. Certain sciences of life could also be condensed, if not into a few lines, at least into a few pages. The form they will take when they have come from the lapidary will dishearten many of the unbelievers. We expect the roads of happiness, like those which lead to Heaven, to be very long, and especially very complex. Yet there are candid souls that go there by the simplest ways. And the road they pursue is the best one. Let us try to imitate these souls by plucking from the tree of life a few fruits which are full of flavour. Their quality will not be always of the choicest. There will even be bitter and utterly bad fruits, for it is necessary to have a rare gift to be able to choose unerringly, and I shall not be so absurd as to claim this gift myself. But, by reflecting upon the benefit these fruits afford, we shall perceive the possibility of securing finer and more nutritious specimens. We shall also discover how profitless it is to leave them unused. And then more skilful gardeners will obtain for them greater flavour, and, above all, more tempting forms. Here are some of the articles of a catechism of happiness. We may begin with that of our moral existence. We will proceed by a presentation, in a few words, a sort of short formula, of one experience of life, and mention as a commentary its attractions and its benefits.

To Be Happyj we Must Wish to Be So Happiness is the child of our will. The stronger this is, the more

beautiful is its product. There are people who are happy, thanks to mere chance, but this happiness is ephemeral. The lightest breeze lays it low; it is uprooted and destroyed by the least adversity. Only by the exertion of our will can it be consolidated. When we determine to be happy at any cost, when we bend life to the exigency of our happiness, the latter rises triumphantly and majestically against the entire world. Thought, subjugated by our desire to be happy, breathes upon the frowns of fortune and converts them into smiles. Then we even laugh at fatality. The latter no doubt is potent, but it can accomplish nothing against the impossible. Unhappiness cannot enter our souls when, adequately armed, they repel their foes.

Let us Balance the Account of our Life Daily The incidents of life, provided we do not reflect upon them, do not form part of ourselves. They glide over our souls like water over rocks. To enjoy our individual happiness, it must be seized while passing. Otherwise it flies as do the phantoms of a dream. We complain of the brief duration of our life. By pausing before its manifestations, we render it more intense. Above all, we shall render it more advantageous for our future. Let us pause in preference before our happiness. How many times it has fallen to my lot to talk with people who ought to have been very happy! Always busy, they had not understood the conditions of their happiness, and it has passed.They were even unhappy from having shut their eyes to the causes for their happiness. We must look at our own life, then we shall love it more.

A Harmonious Life Ought to Embrace the Past, the Presents and the Future The past contains, like a strong-box, the treasures of the life which has been lived. These treasures are ours. We dispose of them according to our pleasure. We linger over the happy moments, we reject the painful ones, and we reflect upon the facts that are pregnant with instruction. In this way we multiply the instants of happiness and enrich our lives. The future is like the present. We enjoy it through the imagination. The past, which serves for instruction, is also a source of pleasures. We must also think again of its sorrows, for we must recall our lives. The sweetness and the goodness of things are ours only at this price. They comfort us for disappointments and give existence its value. Everything which befalls us in life ought to serve for the formation and the extension of our ego. For that very reason our existence becomes richer, more intense, and more interesting. We gain the jo^^s of a double life. The one which is enacted in the depths of our souls is supplemented by that which passes ouside.

Let us Avoid Anger The gentleness of indulgence disarms the wicked, and nourishes our own souls with honey. It averts from us the wrath which brings in its train injustice and vengeance. Anger is a venom dangerous to the soul and destructive to the body. When it takes possession of our ego/ it penetrates the most mysterious corners. A source of weakness, it degrades man, and renders him inferior to the person

against whom it is exercised.

Let us Be Men!

To live rightly, it is necessary to possess the consciousness of the dignity of man. This quality adorns life and fills it with happiness. There is no superior or inferior position, for all positions are dependent upon our consciousness which, like the sun, shines alike upon the lofty and the humble. The art of living is merely the art of conducting ourselves worthily under the smiles and the frowns of fortune and evincing humanity in our deeds and in our thoughts, thus dominating them, instead of being their slaves. We must believe in human dignity, that ruling faith animating and guiding our existence. Thus we feel ourselves penetrated by the bond which unites us to the great AIL Whether we be deists or atheists, this bond will be for us a source of pride, of energy, of consolation, of encouragement. Then we shall truly live, and we shall also labour more humanely, more joyously.

Happiness Depends upon the Extent of our Love The soul that is filled with affection resembles a well-lighted room. Love and kindness illumine and revive our consciousness. But we often lavish kindness or, friendship upon those undeserving of it. Such expenditure ought not to be too deeply regretted, for the satisfactions which they afford us, nevertheless, remain great and wholesome. The pleasure which the exercise of kind feelings affords is good for us, and we cannot be deprived of this benefit. Whoever

shows himself unworthy is like the diseased tree which, before dying, gives us its fruits, without desiring to do so.

Life Is Effort, Labour, Action This is a thought which all who are dreaming in their retirement should keep in view. To with- draw from life is to attract death. The asserted repose is only the torpor of our body and our mind. Both weaken and offer an easy prey to their natural enemies, diseases. Those who speak ill of action and rush toward repose resemble people who would seek joy in the silence of the tombs. The pleasure is brief, for the semblance of death is swiftly transformed into death itself.

Courtesy as the Basis of Success Courtesy conquers everything and costs us nothing. Thanks to it, the most insignificant man derives a positive benefit. It is a token which leads to the presumption of agreeable gifts: kindness, gentleness, a good education. Not to use courtesy, ould be equivalent to casting away a treasure which is offered gratis. When politeness comes from the heart, it reaches hearts, and protects us as artillery protects the army which is following. We advance through life pleasantly, for everything yields to its magic power which conquers on its way both hearts and imaginations.

V. If, from the moral domain, we pass to that of physical health, we

shall perceive still better the profound influence of these guiding thoughts. They ought to direct us, like lighthouses along the numberless pathways of our life. Health is one of the fundamental causes of happiness. People who are well regard things sanely. They are almost always optimistic. Life in itself is not an evil. Bad digestion counts nine tenths in our gloomy ideas. Cure yourself, we ought to say to the pessimists, and life will present itself to you in all its charms. Yet mankind is becoming more and more sad and disenchanted. This is because humanity is moving farther and farther away from wholesome principles. We talk far too much of social hygiene, but we do far too little to realise it in life. Dr. J. Hericourt shows that the government and society are rivalling each other in the task of propagating diseases.* Comparison with past ages affords us too facile consolations. We forget that the conditions of existence have radically changed. Human agglomerations have become too dense; the waters we drink are more apt to be infected; we live far less in the open air; we work too much with our brains, and too little with our muscles. The generations which immediately preceded us have suffered from too many bloody and violent revolutions. They have bequeathed a morbid heritage of unsettled nerves and feeble organisms. The bad germs of our ancestors are committing ravages in us, like the evil microbes, multiplied during the centuries in the waters and in the air.
Modern Hygiene.

Sooner or later social hygiene will triumph. It will establish its reign

over the societies of the future with the majesty of a law of collective safety. While awaiting its victory, w^e all ought to watch over our own well-being, before advancing to the conquest of the general welfare. This will only hasten its advent. The human race, to be reformed morally, must, above all, be reformed physically. The two forms of health are connected, and afford each other mutual support. Mankind, qualified for happiness, will not only be better, it will also be more sane. Here, as elsewhere, we can do much for ourselves, through our own efforts. A breviary of health, containing in condensed form the most important rules to follow, might regenerate humanity. These reminders, placed constantly before our eyes, would permeate our consciousness. Imagine several generations submitting docilely to these beneficent suggestions. The pleasure of living, under their influence, would be changed into the luxury of living. Let us instance, by way of examples, a few directions for living sanely. Let us trust to comprehensive souls. Through these few separate leaves, a perception is afforded of the beauty and of the utility of the entire plant from which these leaves are detached.

Let us Avoid Excess in Food Almost all persons eat two or three times as much as the human organism requires. The products of excessive and poorly assimilated alimentation cause an efflorescence of toxins. Our weakened bodies become the refuge of all sorts of diseases. Our moral being, in its turn, is also vigorously attacked. Life becomes a burden. In proportion to the approach of maladies, the joy of living and

happiness recede. We ought to be on our guard against our appetite. We should master instead of submitting to it, a laconic precept upon the adoption of which often depends the welfare of a long and happy life.

Let us Harmonise our Mental and our Physical Activity There is an imperious necessity for exercising at the same time our muscles and our brains. A sane and powerful mentality demands a sound and substantial body. Manual labourers ought to use their minds. The right to intellectual culture is the fundamental right of the working class, as the right of making their muscles work belongs to the liberal professions. But it is not sufficient to grant a right, the possibility of exercising it should also be assured. Upon the balance between our muscular and our cerebral life depends the rational improvement and the happiness of the human race.

The Primordial Duty of Man Is to Respect his Health Our individual health is not only the foimdation of our own happiness, but it also contributes to the happiness of the community. Excesses committed injure visibly only ourselves, but they are equally harmful to our immediate environment, to the community, to the State. They also wrong future generations. Incalculable in their consequences, our transgressions against the vital principles of our organism thus become actual offences. It is mans duty to practice physical morality. Attacks upon the laws

of health, though difficult to define and to punish, nevertheless remain offences, while sometimes assuming the gravity of crimes.

VI. We are almost constantly witnessing the spectacle of enormous

efforts to obtain moderate results. In political and social life majestic engines are brought forward to heat little glasses of water. Costly meetings of sovereigns, accompanied with reviews of their armies, are organised, which have no influence upon the progress of things. Elaborate laws are promulgated which change nothing. They resemble the imposing buildings that afford no one shelter. These sights are familiar. They no longer cause astonishment. But the contrary scandalises us. A little turbine intended to move a complex machine leaves us incredulous. The influence which these maxims, so easily drawn up and maintained, can exert upon the moral and the physical health of human beings will not be readily admitted. We believe far more readily in the power of big books whose ideas escape us, as trees are lost in vast forests. Yet these precepts might be as numerous as the infinite aspects of life. They might sum up its entire philosophy by placing it within the reach of every mind, of every heart.

VII. We are grateful to a friend when, in a difficult moment, he

pushes us into a path that is favourable to our happiness. These fruits of wisdom would exercise the functions of these prudent friends. The flowers of experience gathered among neighbours would thus be utilised; as also those which have grown in the gardens of our minds. These cautions would often be like the seeds which, carelessly flung upon the soil, produce beneficent trees. Amid the intersecting roads the pathway of our safety would be easily found. Thanks to the seeds

which have been scattered, our minds will grow. Adapted to the understanding of juvenile brains, these delightful precepts of wisdom might easily increase experience before maturity. These maxims would be dissolved in the youthful minds as foods easily assimilable are mingled with our organism. Repeated to satiety, they would become an integral part. There are undoubtedly books of maxims, of aphorisms, or of detached thoughts. But the idea which guides these is rather that of amusing or of shocking our imagination. We do not take their instructions seriously. This anxiety to instruct, usually absent in authors, is still more so among those who read their works.

VIII. Breviaries, as we conceive them, will be true manuals of life.

Their contents, chosen with method and discernment, should be engraved 19 upon our memories in a beautiful and attractive form. Their thoughts should be like those royal gifts which, often undeserved, fall into our lives and cover them with magnificence and splendour. Utilitarian manuals for young and old, they would form a peerless pedagogy, a pedagogy of the happy life. Thanks to them, the soul could be rendered more sensitive to happiness and. happiness more solicitous for our souls. Placed in the hands of youths, they could do much for the education and elevation of minds. In their condensed form, far from stifling, they would enlarge our minds, by making them mature more rapidly, in their applications to the wisdom of life. These summaries of the experiences of the outer life would facilitate the unfolding of the inner one, as the fortune inherited from their fathers facilitates the increase of the wealth of the sons. The

catechism of life will perhaps be a subject of instruction in a few halfscores of years. And doubtless it will not be the subject that the pupils will study with the least diligence and love. The pupils will see, in this way, the most instructive aspects of life. They will leam from a tender age the means of driving away sorrow and attracting happiness. Our demonstration may not be entirely convincing. This tells against our eloquence, but not against our idea. A bad guide, I have chosen a bad path. It may be that I have inadequately described the charms. Test these by seeking them yourself. Compose a breviary of life, based upon your own observations. Try to keep it henceforth before your eyes. To understand its advantages more readily, begin with that of physical health. Its effects are more prompt, and for that very reason, more convincing. Reduced to a score of precepts, the suggested breviary would spare us many disappointments. These instructions, ever present to our minds, would bar the way of a double number of maladies. We should live more happily, while at the same time living longer.

The Morality of Happiness

I. Life dominates the universe. It existed before us, and will exist
after we have passed away. To it we owe what we are, and we must transmit to others the sacred torch which has been confided to us. We must live our life. This is the supreme lesson which is impressed upon us from all sides. The normal human being will always manifest a desire to live, and an instinctive apprehension of death. We undoubtedly feel the void that we shall leave after our disappearance, we even grieve over it. Yet we do not go so far as to believe in the disappearance of life from the moment that we shall be no more. Life remains and will remain the primordial factor, without which we cannot imagine the nature of the outer world nor our inward personality. The basis of all our thoughts and of all our actions, it may be, and it is in reality, the underlying foundation of morality.

II. We live. Whatever may be the cause to which we owe life, we

must submit to its requirements. It is necessary to live, and furthermore to live happily. These are two inseparable postulates, which may furnish the system of government of our lives, a system of morality. The history of mankind is often summed up in a good or in a bad conception of happiness. For the idea that we form of it, the sentiments which it inspires in us, fill our lives. Granted a human race composed of philosophers, and their mode of thinking and of living would become in its turn philosophical. It is not sacrifice or

abnegation which has created human civilisation. It is the ideal of happiness which the best of human beings have formed. All have laboured in view of their low or lofty interest; all have been guided by their instinctive or conscious aspirations toward happiness. But how are we to live? How are we best to fulfil our destiny? To answer this anxious inquiry thousands of systems of morality have been devised. At the present day, as in the times of the first philosophers, there is division on this subject. The ideal proposed was sometimes too high, sometimes too low. Above all, it was too far apart from our real interests or our individual aspirations. Men appeared to forget that the desire to live happily follows the principle of life, as the night follows the day. Happiness feeds and directs our life. Undoubtedly it assumes all shapes. Let us distrust those that deceive our judgment, for even the renunciation of happiness is only one of its special forms. Viewing the sacrifice toward which noble souls tend, it seems to us that their desire is to live in misery. On becoming closely connected with them, we perceive that the point in question is not a negation of happiness, but the attainment of a more refined, more elevated happiness. The morality of the ascetics is nourished by the pleasure of suffering, an inverse form of happiness. Madame de Sevigne speaks of a priest who ate stockfish in this world that he might feast upon salmon in the other. In the depths of many religious calculations which are lauded as the ideal morality, we almost always find the eternal stockfish with which we are content while anticipating delicious fish in the world beyond the tomb.

III. It is the meaning which we attach to happiness that renders our

life base or noble.

The moral masquerade in which we live makes us disguise the directing thought of our acts. It is baptised by so many false names, it is made to submit to so many changes, that its real nature remains hidden and intangible. With rare hypc- crisy, we found moralities upon principles of duty, of justice, of love, of the fear of heaven and of hell. Strip them and we shall discover, beneath all these artifices, the true motive of life, the search for happiness. Therefore, let us grant happiness openly the dominant place, since, victorious, it has resisted and is resisting all the attempts to stifle it.

IV. The aim of science, in general, and that of morality, in particular,

consists in releasing the truth of facts and feelings, but not in veiling these facts, or in making them forcibly return into preconceived ideas. Man owes all that he is to the vanished generations. This debt he must, in turn, repay to those that will follow. He does not imagine himself without the dead who have disappeared, the living who surround him or those who will come after him. He has sacred debts to the dead, and duties to the living. This solidarity between the dead and the Jiving, and between the living themselves, is thrust upon him in his every act and in his every thought. Moreover, experience teaches him that his happiness is only the result of the happiness of the community. In the same way that he was shaped by the vanished generations, he depends upon the huinan beings by whom he is surrounded. Grant that society might return to a state of brigandage, and his safety, as well as his personal happiness, will vanish with the happiness of the community. The hygienic precautions taken by the individual result in profit to the public, just as his health, in its turn, depends upon the measures for

the prevention of disease adopted by the community. The law, that expression of the public will, protects the community against the perils of unchained selfishness. These instances of the dependence and the reciprocal solidarity of our personal interests, and those of the community, might be multiplied ad infinitum. And the more we reflect upon the laws of our happiness, the more we perceive its direct dependence upon the happiness of the community, the happiness of our native country, and of the native countries of other peoples. This discovery shows us and explains the supreme duty of our life: no one has a right to enjoy the benefits which he owes to the labour of others, without contributing his share, in proportion to his means, to their happiness and their safety. Thus we have duties to the family, the community, to the fatherland, and to the human race.

V. The long ages during which life was misunderstood have made us
disparage happiness. A pedagogy based upon ideas often contrary to the nature of man, has rendered it contemptible. Happiness, the moralists assert, is only interest, and the interest is vile and unworthy. Instead of placing happiness upon the heights to lead human beings upward, it was constantly assigned a suspicious place in a degraded life. Happiness was hidden behind false virtues, as the nobles of the old days covered their natural hair with somewhat doubtful wigs. And although happiness was banished from the city, nevertheless, more ardent than ever, laughing at those who sought to stifle it, it has never ceased to demand its rights. Like the bell of which Victor Hugo sang:

 Even while sleeping with nor breath nor light. Still the volcano smokes and sighs the bell. Still from its brazen heart the prayer doth well, And we no more can stay the sounds that rise Than stop the oceans waves, or winds from out the skies.

Hypnotised by the erroneous ideas of our ancestors, we tremble at the thought of the rehabilitation of happiness. Its deliverance seems at once odious and dangerous. At the bottom of our apprehensions appears, amazing in its survival, the conception of the diabolical origin of man. The son of Satan, man incarnates evil. To restrain his wicked nature, it must be lulled to sleep by decoctions of sublime abnegation. Because he has been seen coercing the weak, it has been concluded that his nature demands the exercise of tyranny over his fellow-beings; because he has been found treacherous and given to lying, it has been inferred that he is bom for cunning or falsehood. The facts proven have doubtless been true, but their interpretation has been in every respect false. In reality, man loves, seeks, and lives only through and for happiness. Transform his sensibility, improve his feelings and, instead of doing evil, he will live for good, which then becomes one of the essential conditions of his happiness. Maine de Biran has given utterance to this profound observation": Give to the strong being a feeling of sympathy and love, and instead of oppressing the weak his relative power will henceforth be exercised only in their support. We preach to man .the sacrifice of his own person in behalf of the species, and he does not cease to claim his individual rights to life.

The addresses of the founders of religions, and the tirades of the moralists are shattered against the invincible necessities of our rights, of our life, of our happiness. Yet the purest, the most disinterested minds often abandon their abstractions when they encounter reality. Then the religions speak of the reward, an invincible means of attracting and of holding mortals in the path of virtue.

*Foundations of Morality and Religion.

Rejoice and be exceeding glad, Jesus has said, for great is your reward in Heaven. . . . Also that thine alms may be in secret: and thy ather which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (Saint Matthew.) We must submit to evidence. Nature herself seems to be favourable to the rights of the individual. We witness, without opposition, the sacrifices which the latter makes for the race. But it may be set up as a principle that these sacrifices are in an inverse ratio to the value of the individual. In proportion to his ascent in the organic scale, his forms of immolation to the race diminish in quantity and in quality. The Myxomycetes as well as the various cryptogams disappear as individuals as soon as they are bom, for in associating they cease to exist separately, and in the form of plasmodia they become a mass of living matter. The swimming polyps form colonies of organs necessary for the existence of the community. Ascend by a few steps, and we shall see how the individual is emancipated up to the time when, with man, he has his personality independent from that of the community. He might live almost

isolated from his fellow-creatures if it were not for his happiness, which imperiously demands the social state with all the rights and the duties the latter involves.

VI. But, it will be said, if the principle of happiness flows from

individual interest, will it not expose us to disappointments, for our interest is not always just? Granted. But nothing is perfect under the sun. The just itself is often dangerous or harmful. The fate of human societies frequently depends upon stratagems and falsehoods. In the struggle of the weak against the strong the former would perish if they were condemned to use only means which are not reprehensible. The essential point is to diminish, as much as possible, the attacks made upon the principles of truth and of goodness. Yet it would be wrong to condemn justice and truth because their application, often difficult, may also be harmful. The principle of happiness sometimes occasions moral disappointments, but what principle of morality is free from these? That of happiness will at least have in its favour the sincerity and the force of a general and inevitable law. Far from being an invention of the philosophers, it is a reality of life. And if morality cannot always descend to the level of happiness, let us raise the latter to the level of lofty morality. If the mountain will not go to Mahomet, runs an old saying, Mahomet must go to the mountain. Our ideal of happiness must be educated. We must make it include divine things, and the human race will have aspirations toward sublime happiness.

VII. When we succeed in rooting in our consciousness the

recognition of the enhancement of our happiness which goodness and solidarity afford, humanity will become good and beautiful, just

as it is advancing toward peace in proportion to its understanding of the miseries of war. We could never urge suflficiently the power of suggestion. Often it is only necessary to consider that a suggestion of our senses is real for this illusion to assume the force of reality. What, from the standpoint of abstract beauty, is more insuflficient than our organism? But, by dint of believing it perfect, we do not perceive its defects. Yet in the eyes of experienced anatomists, the human body is only an unfinished model. Numberless ruins, vestiges of a long-vanished past, encumber it in every direction. Some of its organs are entirely useless; others, without charm and obsolete, rebel against the harmony of the whole. Of what service is the epiphysis of the brain or the pineal gland? It is only a useless survival of the cyclopean eye of the saurians. As useless are the extrinsic muscles of the ear, or the lachrymal caruncle, a heritage bequeathed by the third eyelid of the mammals. According to Widers- heim man would have one hundred and seven of these hereditary abortive organs, which will perhaps survive thousands of centuries more, contrary to the rules of utility and beauty. Man has no cure for these. He is so convinced of the perfection of his organism that these defects have no influence upon him. The dogma of feminine beauty affords us a still more striking example. The structure of woman is contrary to the rules of the all-powerful canon. Yet woman even more than mannurtured by the suggestions of so many centuries, does not cease to see in her form the incarnation of supreme beauty. The mind rules our acts. It also rules our sensibility and, for that very reason, our happiness. It is only necessary to stint or to nourish it, and, in its turn, it will

affect our way of seeing and feeling things, in short, it will shape our happiness.

VIII. Morality is only a partial conception of our mind. We can form

and deform it, according to the elements which enter into its composition. We slander morality by calling it exclusively innate. If this were true, religion and pedagogy would become equally useless, and we might close at the same time both the schools and the churches. But happiness depends chiefly upon the moral feelings. Intelligence and happiness often follow two parallel lines, which appear analogous, though they are not identical. Intelligence acts upon happiness only in an indirect manner by influencing our morality and our aspirations. But happiness has its roots sunk in the moral domain. Vainly would the sources of happiness be sought elsewhere. The man who has not succeeded in implanting them in his conscience, will find them neither in wealth, nor in honours, nor in pleasures. External circumstances can do everything: they can even destroy us, but they cannot give us happiness if our morality does not aid them. That is what gives value to life. Without it, happiness refuses to grow as, without the sun, neither flowers nor fruits would come to gladden our eyes. Ah! how charming is the Persian legend about the perfectly happy man! A king who was very powerful and very unhappy, consulted his astrologers. What must one do to be happy? The latter, after patient searching, found the clue to the riddle. Omnipotent king, you must wear the shirt of a perfectly happy man. After long search

a poor peasant was found who was perfectly happy. He was a ragged fellow, who had no shirt.

IX. Auguste Comte has set forth the influence of morality upon
happiness in pages of absolute lucidity: True human felicity, he says, depends more upon moral progress, over which at the same time we have greater control, though its exercise may be more difficult. There is no. intellectual improvement which, in this respect, could equal, for instance, a real increase of goodness and of courage." Elsewhere Comte formulates, in a still more definite manner, the influence of moral progress upon happiness: Our moral improvement participates in our true happiness in a way more direct, more complex, and more certain than any other thing whatever. Long before Comte, the immortal author of Le Traite des Passions de VAme had discovered this interdependence of cause and effect which unites our moral life with happiness.

*A. Comte, Sysihne de politique positive.

Whoever, Descartes affirms, has lived in such a way that conscience cannot reproach him with having ever failed to do any of the things which he has believed to be best (the virtues), receives from this immunity a great satisfaction which renders him happy. X. Yet let us not be excessively optimistic. The noble principles which work out the healthy comprehension of happiness suffer serious perversions in life. This simply proves that we have not done enough to secure the triumph of noble happiness and to establish it on solid foundations within the precincts of our consciousness. We

know that life is very hard upon all ideal conceptions. They can maintain themselves in their serene beauty only in the domain of the absolute. Therefore the morality of pure happiness, considered from the absolute standpoint, must not be confused with applied happiness. The task of the educators will be to bring us nearer and nearer to the heights of pure, absolute happiness. When the ideal of practical happiness is brought as nearly as possible to the ideal instituted by the morality of happiness, it will answer all the requirements of duty and of justice. This morality will doubtless be slow in establishing itself. It must first give a precise definition of its principles, and after that bring about their adoption. Above all, it must uproot the false notions of happiness on which we have lived from time immemorial, in order to replace these with new ones. But henceforth we can foresee profound and beneficent changes resulting.

XI. When mankind has understood that happiness lies within

ourselves, and that we are happy only because we desire to be so, thousands of prejudices will crumble around us, prejudices which now prevent our moral improvement, and impede our way to happiness. We have showed elsewhere that our unhappiness is frequently only the product of our misconception of life. We do things which are harmful to others, without thinking that their woe is baneful to ourselves. Envy, the mother of so many social misdeeds, is chiefly injurious to ourselves. Kindness and love, the source of happiness to others, obtain this blessing first for those who put them in practice. The wealth which is the result of effort profitable to others,

alone affords genuine enjoyment. Labour produces a lasting joy. Family life, based upon mutual love and respect, does the greatest good to its members. From every side comes the same assurance: it is impossible to enjoy a noble and permanent happiness outside of that of our neighbours. In proportion as our life broadens and grows nobler, this solidarity of happiness enlarges more and more. Platos divine theory of virtue is conjured up as we study happiness. Virtue is a science, the philosopher taught. Whoever does evil is a person who does not know good. The same is true of happiness. The unhappy man is he who is ignorant how to obtain happiness.

XII. People who boast of having studied life shrug their shoulders
when they hear happiness spoken of in this way. Goodness and love as ends in themselves! Nonsense! And they cite numerous examples showing the contrary. Do not criminals who rob on a grand scale enjoy the fruits of their crimes? They are rich and proud. Social distinctions are theirs, as well as the esteem of their fellow-citizens. They distribute the favours of life. They are envied. Each great city has its infamous dens where swarms a population that is suspicious and criminal. When victims are abundant and crimes easy, its members appear to enjoy unclouded happiness. They give themselves up to drunkenness and debauchery and would not, on any account, change their picturesque and adventurous life. Are they really happy? Who is the man who, aside from the question of responsibility, would accept this form of happiness? We challenge at this stage the apologists of triumphant vice. Does not the point in question concern a special form of happiness? We need only see it at closer range to disdain, if not to scorn it. Certain animals live with entire satisfaction in the quagmires. There are

others that thrive only in the mire. Can we envy or desire that kind of happiness? We have chosen extreme cases: criminals on a large scale, benefiting by the consideration of the world, and criminals of low grade, objects of horror and universal scorn, enjoying the smiles of fate. What is the difference that separates them? When we tear off the masks that cover the true aspect of things, we perceive the fragility of their happiness. Especially do we perceive its inferior quality. As the man who has enjoyed the delights of pure air will not exchange it for a vitiated atmosphere, so he who has understood the beauty and the nobility of genuine happiness wi 1 not abandon its domain to venture into the marshy fields of vice.

XIII. Happiness being the goal of man, and the goal of society, it is
easy to deduce from it the direction of individual and social life. Man is a social being, and his' happiness being impossible outside of society, it must harmonise with the requirements of the happiness of the community. This harmony is formed upon the bases of Justice, which, in its turn, creates Duty. Their principles aim at the happiness of the community, and this communal happiness is only the aggregate of individual happinesses. The happiness of the individual must be subordinate to Justice, which, the vigilant guardian of the happiness of the community, remains the determining factor of individual happiness. Both must be rational, for morality can consider only rational beings.' An involuntary distrust seizes upon us with regard to a morality founded upon happiness. Is not this the unchaining of all the passions and all the appetities? We may remark, however,n that, while believing it just, we have in view for its practice, only a human

race which, without being superior, will have understood its real interests. To reach it will require a preliminary culture as well as a rational comprehension of happiness. Sooner or later, this education will triumph. First of all, it will be necessary to make mankind abandon its false ideas, that it may offer us good men.
The author will develop in a special work the system of morality based exclusively upon happiness {Progress and Happiness) y with the ramifications of secondary principles with which it is connected.

This education has the peculiarity that it imposes upon us the duty of being our own educators. It asks us to regulate our own lives and to bring them into harmony with our own happiness, in order that the happiness of others may be secured.

XIV. A morality, based upon happiness as its object, is at any rate

more elevated than that based upon fear. It is more dignified, more generous, and especially more human. It acts in the broad light and possesses divine simplicity. The sacrifices it will impose will be so much the sweeter because their aim will be more easily understood. The obligation to do our duty solely through duty, in view of duty alone, seems at the present day, in spite of the authority of Kant, a childish and unrealisable desire. Herbert Spencer was right in saying that a human society living upon Kants principle would be unbearable. Absolute duty, placed outside of individual and social interests, makes us smile, like the Dalai Lama, who, invisible and confined, expects to rule as a superior being. For duty itself is defined by purposes which have given it birth, and which maintain its essence, as the sap vivifies the tree. The salvation which the morality of happiness promises, moreover,

appears more certain than that of the moralities foimded upon heavenly recompense or the fear of hell. Besides, these latter are more and more out of fashion.

VIII WHAT IS HAPPINESS ? I. Definitions of happiness abound. They are not only numerous,
they are especially contradictory. There is the special happiness of the scorners of life; there is another for those by whom life is exalted. A philosophers mode of life produces in his consciousness the desire for a wise happiness; a dissipated life arouses the aspiration for a happiness base in its essence. But what is true happiness? We feel it sufficiently when we see happy people. Yet we are much perplexed when the attempt is made to define their happiness. We all find ourselves somewhat in the position of Saint Augustine. If you should ask m e , h e says, what Time is, I should not know how to tell you. But I know perfectly so long as I am not asked. We may try, however, to derive from the different causes of happiness the conditions which create it and make it endure. Let us note, chiefly, that happiness assumes all forms, for it is fashioned according to our souls, and therefore infinitely variable. The more elevated it is, the more permanent. And these two qualities, elevation and permanency, constitute the attributes of the ideal happiness. But it is not enough to desire a lofty happiness, we must also deserve it. Like certain plants of rare quality, happiness grows only in favourable places. For its reception and its retention a well-adapted soul is needed. To enjoy the happiness of a Plato, a man must have lived like Plato. Above all, he must have thought of life and conceived it in the manner of Plato. Nor will the definition of happiness framed by a Socrates

correspond with that of a depraved gambler or of a hardened pessimist. Yet the conceptions of happiness formed by good men have many chances of coinciding. This harmony, however, requires a preliminary understanding relative to the extent and to the objects of happiness; for the majority of thinkers and of philosophers confuse in a regrettable manner happiness and pleasure, happiness and felicity, and even, as Voltaire has proved, happiness and happiness.

II. Happiness, properly so-called, has only an ephemeral duration,

while felicity presupposes a condition that is relatively stable, if not permanent. According to the dictionary of the encyclopaedists, happiness comes from without. It is originally a good Jiourj * very limited in time. We may feel a happiness, without being happy. Happiness, thus limited, resembles pleasure, whose weight, however, is lighter. For pleasure may last only the space of a moment, and vanish with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. Again, there is the happiness which is the consequence of fortunate events, and a happiness limited to one pleasant fact.

III. Happiness, when it strikes its roots into our inward life, is
transformed into felicity. This is the happiness which is most stable, most enduring, and most easy to acquire. We ourselves are its creators, and we remain its masters. It is an almost permanent condition. It secures the balance of our soul and guarantees to it a harmony that is difficult to find and still more difficult to destroy. As we have considered it in the course of this work, it forms the right of the individual. At the same time it urges itself as a duty to be accomplished. The individual has the right to be happy, but he has

also the duty of being so in order to secure the greatest benefit of the community. The man who is truly happy is he who enjoys a serenity of soul the causes of which flow from his inner life. The more profound this inner life is, the loftier the motives which direct it, the more beautiful, intense, and permanent will be the happiness which it produces.
Bonheur, the French word for happiness, is composed of bon (good) and heur Qieure, hour) whose final e is supposed to be dropped in the word. The English happiness is not formed of words having the same meaning as the French ones, and therefore the suggestion is lost.

It is in conformity with this meaning that Descartes^ distinguishes happiness from beatitude. The former depends solely upon things that are without us, while beatitude consists in a perfect contentment of mind and an inward satisfaction, which are not ordinarily possessed by those who are the most favoured by fortune, and which philosophers acquire without its aid. And Descartes adds to his definition this clever remark: It seems to me that each man may be content with himself, without expecting anything elsewhere. In saying this, Descartes has only formulated, in other terms, the ancient definition of Aristotle, so often laid under contribution by the philosophers of all the ages. Happiness is something perfect, for it is sufficient unto itself. It is accessible to all, since there is no man, provided that he is not so banned by Nature as to be incapable of any virtue, who may not obtain it through effort or study. In short, Aristotle says, happiness is an employment of the activity of the soul, conformably with virtue.
Correspondance.

IV. Serenity of soul must not be confounded with the inactivity or

the passive contemplation of the Nirvana. Life is movement, and happiness, which is simply the sublime aspiration of life, can be found only in action, in the development of our physical, moral, and intellectual faculties. Our intellect models this activity according to its character. The work of a philosopher, having a different point of departure and aiming toward a different goal, will not be identical with the same work performed at his side by a man with ordinary aspirations. This is why a noble activity of the soul is requisite for a noble happiness, the only one which is intense and permanent. By taking the strict point of view, by basing happiness upon the outbursts of animal joy, or upon the brutal expression of our countenances, the special happiness produced by general paralysis was confused with happiness in the true meaning of the word. The sick man in this condition shows the maximum of satisfaction with life. He believes in his blooming health, his extraordinary endurance, his physical beauty. He believes that his dwelling, however plain it may be, is one of the most sumptuous abodes. He believes, above all, in his happiness, which leaves nothing to be desired. Gradually his brain weakens. He imagines himself to be the richest, the most powerful of all men on the earth. He is a sovereign, he is the Pope, he is the autocrat of the entire universe. But this pleasant illusion does not last long. The patient undergoes terrible awakenings, then comes the tragic collapse, definite and fatal. By following the same track, Cesare Lombroso, who has devoted profound pages to the psychology of the insane, considers that, among the latter, happiness shows itself in an intense and lasting

manner. Lombroso, among other instances, cites this curious one of a poor paralytic who, incapable of bringing two ideas into harmony, incessantly repeated, during the last two days before his death: How happy I am! O, how happy I am! On the other hand, the disciples of Cesare Lombroso teach that if happiness shows itself in geniuses, it is only in so far as they approach madness (megalomaniacs, epileptics, etc.) and, at any rate, their happiness would be of very brief duration.

V. We have seen that true happiness, in other words, genuine

felicity, depends, in the first place, upon our moral life. Without consciousness, happiness is only a decoy. Therefore it is futile to endeavour to oppose to it the mirages of happiness, accompanying certain unconscious conditions of our souls. So it is incorrect to talk of the happiness brought about by general paralysis, or by madness. The "atter does not differ from the intoxication caused by opium or hashish. Fleeting sensations, however agreeable they may be, do not replace happiness. The superiority found, in this respect, among lunatics or paralytics, is merely the longer persistence of their delusions. If happiness were obtainable on these terms, we should only need to multiply narcotics while giving them the mission of guiding us to death. On the other hand, what is to be compared with the happiness of a genius accomplishing the task of his life, of an inventor before his successful invention, or of a writer, in love with his work, who sees it born and growing before his eyes! The briefest moments of their joy often suffice to blot out a whole lifetime of troubles and sufferings.

VI. Spinoza, who has founded his ethics upon the will to live, sees-.in
this the cause, all the causes, of happiness. We must act, he tells us, according to the requirements of our personality. This liberation of the inward forces constitutes joy, happiness. There is no liberty, and consequently no joy greater than that of following the mandates of our nature. This conception of Spinoza is maintained by all who love life, and who have striven to reconcile man to it. According to Goethe, mans worth, as well as his happiness, depends upon his ability to give value to existence. Like Spinoza, the immortal author of Faust considered human personality as bearing its object within itself." Our own improvement is the object of our existence; that is why we cannot neglect it and, by pursuing it, we secure our happiness. This fundamental conception of happiness is found, with its various modifications, in almost all the lay moralists who, far from breaking away from life, strive to reconcile human beings to its demands and its joys.

VII. To find a more concrete definition, we might have recourse to

the sensations of pain and of pleasure. Intermingled in life, pleasures and troubles, according to the dominating result of the one or of the other, present themselves to our eyes under the form of happiness or of misery. But this impression is not always trustworthy, for the sensations, the pains, or the pleasures have a value which is sometimes unequal, which sometimes does not admit of comparison.
The purpose of life is life itself. . . . And elsewhere: Pleasure, joy, interest in things is the sole reality. ... All else is idle and disappointing.

Pleasures are chiefly of a higher or of a lower essence. The more noble their source, the more easily we can evoke them through memory. Thus we can more readily reproduce the sensations caused by a beautiful symphony or a painting of Raphael, than the pleasures afforded by the taste of a fine champagne of 1815, or of a dish of swallows nests. So we have an interest in seeking lofty pleasures. The enjoyments which they procure are more varied, more intense, and especially more amenable to our will. Yet pleasures are inconceivable without pains. Their value depends upon the contrast which these latter present. Without pains, life would become colourless, therefore without charm. We must try to lessen the extent of our sorrows, of our pains, of our sufferings, for life inflicts them in an extravagant way, but we must neither hope for nor desire their total extinction. As evil lends value to good, and cold to heat, pain enters into the price of our'happiness. But the philosopher will know how to hold it at a distance, while an ill-balanced mind will succumb to its weight. Happiness draws woe in its train, as pleasure is followed by sorrow. But it is only necessary to purify and to ennoble trouble, and its essence will dissolve into happiness, the instinctive inspiration of our life. Noble pleasures may be infinitely multiplied. Nay, thanks to the imagination, they can become inexhaustible riches. We can remember a book, be enraptured by its ideas, enjoy an indescribable pleasure in evoking its beauty. We recall a pretty landscape and again mentally live in its charms. When we love a friend sincerely, the mere thought of being able to render him a service, of knowing that he is happy, fills us with satisfaction and joy. Delighted by a lofty act of goodness or of courage, we conjure it up and rejoice in its beneficent

charms. The purer the source, the deeper are the pleasures which flow from it, while having a vast extent, and a limitless faculty of repetition. Vulgar pleasures, which are base in their essence, have, on the contrary, a brief duration. Moreover, they remain rebellious to the summons of our memories. There is a common saying, to make the mouth water, when we think of certain dishes or of rare drinks. Try to recall the memory of these sensations, and you will perceive their worthlessness. A prejudice as old as human thought has always identified happiness with pleasure. But, as we have seen, pleasures may contribute to, but do not constitute happiness. It is wrong to proscribe pleasures as a whole, after the fashion of certain moralists or professional pessimists, but it is also wrong to deify them, an exaggeration in an inverse sense, practised by certain ancient schools. Pleasure is usually the expression of health, as pain signifies a morbid condition. Certain physiologists go to the point of discovering in pain the phenomenon of intoxication. The pessimists who assert that pleasure is a negative condition while pain is the positive element of life, singularly misunderstand the elementary psychology of our conditions of soul. We have demonstrated elsewhere the necessity for and the benefits derivable from pain; but its quantity should be greatly moderated. It resembles somewhat the condiments for certain foods, which enable us to possess a higher appreciation of their properties. The apologists for pain insist far too much upon the facts of

its priority. A pleasure, they say, is only an aspiration, or a satisfied need. But, the lack of something having preceded it, a lack being always painful, proves that pain had the precedence. This purely byzantine discussion, even though it were solved in favour of pain, would by no means give the victory to the pessimists. Our progress consists above all in transforming and ameliorating the necessities of nature. We may note, moreover, that certain spontaneous pleasures are bom and develop almost outside of necessities. The charm of an unexpected conversation, the pleasant intercourse with strangers, a profit realised entirely without anticipation, in short, the whole vast scale of pleasures from causes foreign to our consciousness, come within this category. But pleasure, which at its commencement is the expression of the health of the organism, bears within itself the germ of death as soon as we abuse it. There is a threshold of appearances, and a threshold of disappearances by which this pleasure is limited. The Epicureans taught that in the extreme phase of its ascent, pleasure, having become exuberant activity, simultaneously demands and exhausts all the resources of our existence. Excess of pleasure simply destroys the condition of pleasure. Happiness asks, first of all, the stability that pleasure does not furnish. Happiness adopts pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. Besides, as we have stated, the cause, or if we prefer, the foundation of pleasure lies in our vital energy. The health of the body and of the mind, which are the bases of happiness, are also its essential elements. We must be. happy in order to feel pleasure, not enjoy pleasures in order to be happy. Pleasures thus become mere branches of a living, deeprooted tree^happiness. We must strive to be happy, and pleasures

will come voluntarily, like the grass that grows under the beneficent influence of the morning dew.

VIII. In following the gradation of pleasures, as elements

constituting happiness, we discover that the duration and the extent of the latter depend, in the first place, upon the noble character of the sources from which these pleasures flow. Another consideration obtrudes itself: the more exalted and rare in essence the happiness is, the more accessible it is to us. It might be said that, unlike precious stones, beautiful and lasting causes of happiness abound. Yet how is it that there should be so few people who are really happy? It is because we lack a school of happiness. This feeling, so complex in its nature, must be conquered. What is more simple than the cultivation of wheat? Yet a town-bred man would not know how to make the most fertile soil yield a harvest. We understand that to know how to appreciate a fine book, a pretty piece of music, a preliminary acquaintance is requisite. Offer a picture by Titian to a savage, he will cut it in pieces or use it to light a wood fire. A simpleminded soul, to whom we speak of the advantages of goodness, of happiness through the cultivation of the beautiful, of the joy of friendship, or of altruism, is doubtless in the position of the savage toward the masterpiece of a Titian. Happiness must be taught, as we teach grammar, or a foreign language. Its advantages and its weak sides must be seen, especially its beauties and its unsuspected treasures. When the education and the comprehension of happiness have forged their way, we shall see new generations rise. They will know how to make our existence valued at its true worth, and will gather the joy of living where we find only causes to weep. The sources of

happiness which we so imprudently squander will be reconstituted, and from the crumbs which we let fall, millions of famished souls will be fed.

Conclusion
I. Life imposes upon us duties, but it also gives us rights. Too much
has been said of the former, while the latter has been overlooked. We have not understood that, by harmonising the burdens and the pleasures of life, we render the former easier and the latter more permanent. Happiness is the fruit of the union between the severe commands of life and its caresses. The science of happiness chiefly proves that the real happiness of the individual is joined with that of society. An isolated happiness is as unstable as would be the fate of a rich man amid neighbours who were starving to death. Our life and our happiness depend in the first place upon ourselves, for everything that tends to illuminate our existence with lasting joy, to render it beautiful and attractive, is found within us. Genuine happiness consists in living our own life. That is the real, intense life, of which so much has been said^in these latter days. But, intense life is only the omnipotent desire to live and to live happily. Our will contains inexhaustible treasures of felicity, and toward its strengthening, its development, and the enrichment of its contents, a life conscious of its aims must tend. Happiness thus understood is first of all in accord with morality, for it finds itself in complete harmony with the noblest social aspirations.

II. The more we reflect, the more we find that happiness is

exclusively a product of the moral life. Material conditions undoubtedly contribute to it, as rain and fine weather increase the

fertility of the soil, but the sky can do nothing without the soil itself. Personal happiness is never in conflict with social happiness, so long as it allows itself to be guided by the true value of the principles of life. It is the conventional conception, elaborated through the centuries, regarding wealth, envy, the pleasures or the domination of men, which makes us seek objects contrary to social prosperity. The contradictions which are visible between individual and social happiness are only apparent. These are chiefly due to a superannuated education whose conventional foundations have not changed for thousands of years. When this education, better directed, has transformed our ideas of things, certain laws will become superfluous, as has already happened to certain rules of hygiene or of public decency. Therefore we shall find it is often sufficient merely to perceive genuine happiness, to bring it shining among us. The contradictions between our egotism or our interest and that of our environment, it is true, do not cease to sadden us. We deplore their fatal hostility, and go so far as to conceive doubts of the possibility of a better humanity. But we forget that it is not our real interest which causes so much evil, but our incapacity to comprehend our real interest. We ought to move toward and to realise happiness. This aspiration of our souls acting within us permanently, we must render its object loftily moral in order to have our life, in its turn, ennobled and dignified in its essence. There is a pedagogy of happiness, and its possibilities are infinite. Given the appetite for happiness, this pedagogy will create the most efficacious means of becoming happy. Among other precepts it will implant in the human mind that it is not wishes

fulfilled, but duties accomplished, which most surely and most easily procure happiness. Our morality and our life, being restored to their real sources, guided and inspired by an instinctive and innate necessity which hovers as sovereign lord above the ages and the vague humanities, will find themselves for that very reason solidified and endowed with a vitality that bids defiance to the doubts and the paralysis of our intellect. I will go further. Morality, thus conceived, will answer to a sort of categorical imperative, not transcendental, after the method of Kant, but human and operating within the limits of our faculties. When we disobey the morality of happiness, we disobey, at the same time, the exigencies of life. We diminish our own personality and condemn ourselves to a slow suicide. This morality is thus united to the fate of man by indissoluble bonds, bonds of flesh and of aspiration, of the body and of the soul. We need only transfer the ideas of the sublime consciousness into the unconsciousness, and happiness, vivified and ennobled by the Force-Ideas, will offer us the most human of moralities.

III. Everything warrants the belief that the human race is moving
through the ages, towards a jus ter appreciation of the object and the essence of life. Human perfectibility is without limits. When we think that beings like Jesus Christ, Buddha, Zarathustra, or Saint Francis of Assisi were born in environments filled with vice and moral corruption, we feel almost dazzled by the idea of those who will come into the world as products of our more and more social and altruistic civilisation. The action of these highly gifted souls has deeply

impressed human beings and has changed their lives and their ideals. A few more personalities of this elevation of mind and of heart, and our moral conceptions will rise many degrees. According to Herbert Spencer, human evolution will some day lead us to such a height, that moral conduct will be instinctive and will dispense with all constraint. After all, moral life, with its endless extent, lends itself better to change than do certain physiological peculiarities. Yet Burbank has succeeded in growing cacti without thorns and plums without stones. Have we not now numerous varieties of thornless roses? Let us have faith in the triumph of men who will know how to rid themselves some day of the pretences which destroy the joy of living. Teachers of oecological botany show us how, under the influence of Alpine or Polar climates, annuals are transformed into biennial or perennial species. What will men develop into under the influence of the new moral currents which are visibly appearing on the horizon? The attempt has been made to find in the blind a sixth sense, the sense of obstacles. One thing is certain, that we all have within us the sense of happiness, but it is closely hidden in the depths of our being; it is distorted and covered by a deposit of artificial feelings. Let us endeavour to release it from these; let us restore it to its proper position by destroying the prejudices which stifle and prevent its manifestation. Above all, let us educate it. Some day, the sense of happiness, bursting forth in the plenitude of its powers, will transform the moral universe.

IV. Therefore, let us not despair of individual and collective

happiness. Both have extremely deep roots. Auxiliaries are coming to

them from all directions. The world has become more kindly to us, and its mysterious forces are rendering themselves the slaves of man. He understands and utilises them better. The Infinite, subjected to rigorous laws, seems to be more friendly. At any rate, it is less threatening. We are taking possession more and more of the earth, and even of the air. Discounting, in advance, the duration of our stay on earth, we desire it to be equitable. Brutal conquests are daily becoming more repugnant to us. Mans purified conscience is opposed to the unjust spoliations committed to the detriment of his brothers. On the earth, whose crust has been hardened and rendered solid by the ages, we aspire to a life governed by stable laws, and not by the caprices of Force. Sociology only raises our hopes. Progress, like the divine artist of Homer, engraves upon the brass of time scenes of peace and of happiness. A gentle and smiling fairy appears to preside over the human destinies of the future. We are daily more respectful toward one another. Our dignity is ascending step by step, as well as our sentiments of justice and of truth. There are more joy and sympathy on our planet. Sorrow seems to be weaker. Some day mankind will shelter in its bosom, with the same love, the children of every colour and of every creed. Meanwhile, half the human race, namely the women, are profiting by more equity. From the rank of the slaves of man, or of inferior beings, we behold them elevated to the level of his equals. The State is multiplying its duties and performing them in a more satisfactory manner. It is becoming reconciled to the principle of equality. It is more attentive to the voice of Justice. It is urging, in any case, a more and more equitable distribution of burdens and of duties.

Thought descends into the huts of the disinherited to bring caressing dreams. The hope of earthly salvation fills our hearts. This hope rests mainly upon Solidarity and her companion, Goodness, which some day will take possession of our planet. These anticipations gladden the life of collective mankind, as the hope of success and of happiness animates individually almost all its members. * * * * *

Have I succeeded in establishing the possibility and the benefits of the Science of Happiness ? My attempt is doubtless imperfect. So be it. Do we condemn painting because an unskilful artist gives an inadequate idea of beauty? After me, or along with me, others will succeed far better in achieving the triumph of the thesis which I hold dear. I will add that they will not be capable of loving it more ardently...