V
The cult of memory should not turn us away from the present out of which memory itself draws its nourishment.
We sometimes meet men of whom plain people say, with profound wisdom, “Their mind is elsewhere.” It is true; they are the timid and tormented souls who have early sought in memory a refuge which nothing, it seems, could ever make them renounce.
Let us beware of troubling this retreat. Some day, perhaps, we may long for one like it. But however deeply one may seem to have taken refuge in memory, one cannot escape the clutch, the invasion of the present.
It is best, therefore, and with all the strength that is in us, to accept, honor, love this present as the principal source of our riches.
If the true cult of memory were a less exceptional moral usage, many men would hesitate to create bad memories for themselves; for our worst memories are not those of our sufferings, our ordeals, our privations, but of our shameful acts, our cowardices and our betrayals.
Our weakness lasted only a moment; must we really, for thirty years, feel the hostile stare of that moment resting heavily upon us? Who knows? Hope, even so, in the clemency of memory, which is able to mitigate and pardon everything. It is indulgent and full of pity. In a world given over to spite and reprisals, it remains the only inviolable refuge of the outcast, as the cathedrals used to be in the days of the right of sanctuary.
For him who descends with true fervor into his own depths, memory always preserves some corner pure from all baseness. Do we not know, moreover, that in order to console us memory consents to work in concert even with its enemy, forgetfulness?