II
They say of curiosity that it was the beginning of science. That is not praise enough, it sounds rather like an excuse.
What is more human, more touching than this religious reaching out toward the unknown, this sort of instinct which makes us divine and attack the mystery?
To take pride in not being curious! One might as well take pride in some ridiculous infirmity. It is true that even that is in the order of things normal, and that vanity finds its nourishment where it can.
Doubtless there is a sort of curiosity which is both weak and cowardly. It is that of men who dare not remain alone a moment face to face with themselves; they take refuge in loquacity and in reading the daily newspapers. Their fashion of interesting themselves in everything that goes on is a confession that they are unable to become interested in anything eternal. They depend as if for nourishment on that noise which those who have nothing to say are always making. They are like children who cannot amuse themselves alone, or like stupid monarchs who fear nothing so much as silence and their own thoughts, the emptiness of their own thoughts!
And then there are the easy-going people. They want to know everything, the number of your maternal aunt’s children, the price of the furniture and the wages of the servants. They want to know everything and they will never know anything. Their life is spent in forced smiles and in gracefully holding a cup of tea.
Their souls contain vast lists of names, dates and other miserable things. They go through life like beasts of burden, weighed down under loads that have no value.
There are maniacs, too, perverts, freaks, people that are full of curiosity about a postage stamp, the handle of an umbrella; but of these I dare not say anything, for I remember an old and very wise master who used to say to us with a smile: “You who are entering upon scientific careers must begin right away to think about collections, even if you have to collect boxes of matches.”
To tell the truth, is it our business to be wise, to be learned? Hardly! It is our business to be rich.
Well, then, there are not two kinds of curiosity. Let us leave out of the question all those dull stupidities we dare to call by this name.
The curious man seems strangely uninterested in that which excites the loquacity of trivial souls. He does not trouble himself to find out the year in which a house was built, or the honors accorded to the architect; he dreams in secret of the tastes, the passions of the man who had that little, low window pierced on the north side and that black tree with its twisted branches planted at the edge of the pond. He does not ask a young woman the name of her dressmaker, but trembles at the thought of understanding what made her choose that disturbing dress to wear this particular day. He does not question his mistress about her opinion of him, but seeks passionately to understand the opinion he has at this moment of her. He does not hasten to ask his travelling companions about their professions and the political opinions they uphold, because, as he watches their faces, he is studying discreetly and sympathetically the meaning of the little wrinkle that moves between their brows, or the significance of a glance, its source and its object. He does not solicit confidences, he receives them almost without wishing to; they come naturally to him; he is their sure and deep receptacle.
Curious about all this vast world, he seems especially concerned with its image in himself. He bears his curiosity like a sacred gift and exercises it, or rather honors it, as one would perform the rites of a cult.
Do not say you would not wish to be that man. You who feel pride in possessing yourself of a secret, in drawing out a confession, in meriting the confidence of another man, must realize that it is a marvelous fortune to be thus the tenderly imperious confidant who cannot be denied, though often the rest of the world knows nothing of it. And it is possible for you, even if you cannot become such a man at once, at least to labor to become one. Begin, with this in view, to deliver yourself from your little servile curiosities. Let us work together for this future. Let us enter so deeply into ourselves that people will say of us, “That man is not curious about anything.” From that moment we shall have begun to chant the hymn of the great, the divine curiosity.