VII
It seems childish and paradoxical to oppose to all the concrete and formidable realities that are considered as the hereditary wealth of mankind an almost purely ideal world of joys that have no price, that remain outside all our bargainings, that are unstable, often fugitive, and always relative in appearance, whenever we put them to the test. Yet they alone are absolute, they alone are true. Where they are lacking there may be a place for amusement, there is no place for true happiness. They alone are capable of assuring the salvation of the soul. We ought to labor passionately to find them, to amass them as the veritable treasures of humanity.
The future we are permitted to glimpse seems the very negation of happiness and the ruin of the soul.
If this is true, we must examine it with open minds and then, with all our strength, refuse it.
Just this moment, when the struggle for mastery goes on, to the great peril of the soul, among the peoples, just this moment I choose for saying: “Let us think of the salvation of our souls.” And this salvation is not a matter of the future but of the present hour. Let us recognize the existence of the soul; it is thus that we shall save it. Let us give it the freedom of the city in a world where everything conspires to silence or destroy it. If it is true that this withdraws us from that struggle for existence, the clamor of which assails our ears, well, even so, I believe it is better to die than to remain in a universe from which the soul is banished. But we shall have occasion to speak more than once of this.
Let us not forget that happiness is our one aim. Happiness is, above all, a thing of the spirit, and we shall only deserve it at the price of the honors we render to the noblest part of our being.
VIII
There are people who have said to me, “My happiness lies in this very hurly-burly, this brutish labor, this frantic agitation which you spurn. Outside this turmoil of business and society, I am bored. I need it. I need it in order to divert my thoughts.”
No doubt! No doubt! But what have you done with your life that it has become necessary to divert your thoughts? What have you made of your past, what do you hope from your future when this alcohol, this opium, has become necessary to you?
You must understand me, there is no question, if you are built as an athlete, of letting your muscles deteriorate. There is no question, if you have a great thirst for controversy, a natural aptitude for struggle, of letting that thirst go unsatisfied, that aptitude uncultivated. The question is simply one of harmoniously employing all these fine gifts, of enriching yourself with those real treasures the universe bestows on those who wish to take them, and not of wearing out your radiant strength in the labors of a street-porter, a galley-slave or an executioner.