VIII
Exalted spirits, struck by our many resemblances to the beasts, have striven to find what was the distinguishing mark of man. It is a noble solicitude, for wheresoever the mark of men may be it is that way we must go. If we really possess a characteristic virtue of which the animals are deprived, it is that which we must exalt, in order to be completely, proudly, men.
Pascal said: “Man is obviously made to think; and his whole dignity, his whole merit, and his whole duty lies in thinking rightly.”
Can we indeed believe that no other being has this grandeur to any degree? Are we so sure that “a tree does not know it is miserable”?
Even art, which may turn out to be the instrument of our redemption, is not certainly the lot of our race alone. Song and the dance triumph among the animals and often appear like the beautiful inventions of a gratuitous activity, with no other end than themselves and the emotions they give or interpret.
In renunciation, perhaps, lies our distinction, the trait which stamps us and sets us apart.
I say “perhaps,” because animals also offer us examples of abnegation. Sacrifice beautifies even their habits. With them, too, the individual sacrifices himself for the group, the hero sacrifices itself for the race. At the moment when I am writing these lines we are in autumn; a swarm of bees is dying of cold on a branch beside me. They are dying with a sort of resignation, in order that their hive, so poor in resources, may survive the winter.
Why not share, then, with these humble victims, our most beautiful quality? Why refuse to possess something in common with them, since it is a virtue? Why cut ourselves off haughtily from the rest of life?
Over and above this, the renunciation that has no particular or general motive of interest, the pure and absolute renunciation which is a heroic folly, is undoubtedly our business. I am not speaking now of the renunciation of the better religions, the renunciation that counts on celestial rewards, but of the renunciation which is an end in itself, which finds in itself its own sorrowful recompense.