The beautiful legend of the multiplication of the loaves of bread is miraculous only in the material order to which we try to confine it. But the infinite multiplication of moral nourishment is our daily spectacle, our joy, our encouragement.
We know that the possession of material goods inclines us to exclusiveness, solitary satisfaction: if I wish to share with you this beautiful apple I hold in my hand, I must make up my mind to enjoy only half of it myself. And if there are four of us the part each one has will be proportionally reduced. Ah! blessed would be the wonder-worker who could refresh us all with a single glass of water, stay us all with a single mouthful of bread.
That miracle flashes forth every day before our eyes. All moral wealth seems to increase by being possessed in common. The more a truth is spread abroad the more its beauty, its prestige, and in a way its efficacy, grows. The veneration a hundred peoples throw round a painting of da Vinci’s, a song of Glück’s, or a saying of Spinoza’s has not partitioned these lovely treasures but has added to their importance and their glory, has developed and opened up the whole sum of joy that lies latent in them. Great ideas have such radiant strength! They cross space and time like avalanches: they carry along with them whatever they touch. They are the only riches that one shares without ever dividing them.
This fact invites each one of us to make himself the modest and persevering apostle of his own truths, the propagator of his discoveries, the dispenser of his moral riches. Our own interest demands it imperatively, no less than the interest of others. We shall never be really happy until we have admitted and converted to our joy those whom we love; and we shall love them all the better for having brought them some joy, for being among the causes of their comfort.
The journeys we have made alone without companions leave us a memory that is melancholy and without warmth. It is because we have had no one to whom we could communicate our admiration, our wonder. Seated alone before the most majestic landscapes, we have had no one to whom we could express our enthusiasm, and deprived of this expansion it has been stunted, it has remained, we might say, poor. Sharing it would have enriched it.
We love solitude, indeed; it is the cold and silent fountain at which our soul is purified and confirmed. But what would it profit us to have amassed great riches, by the help of solitude, if we had no one to whom to offer them?
It is because he feels this anxiety that man seeks a lasting union. Among a thousand generosities, love offers him the opportunity to enjoy companionship without renouncing solitude. A happy home is the solitude of many a soul. The man who has entered into a beautiful union is sure of at least one person to whom he can give the best that he possesses.
II
Perhaps you will say to me: “How can I be an apostle when I have in myself only a wavering faith? I would enjoy being generous, but I am obliged to beg from the generosity of others. Such advice is for those rich souls who, precisely because they are rich, have no need of advice. It is with this kind of fortune as it is with money, it crowns those who already possess it! My soul is poor and timid; what sort of comfort would it be for other souls that are poor and timid also?”
O my friend, how deceived you are in yourself! How much like ingratitude your modesty seems! First of all, let me tell you that the heart that doubts its resources is rich without knowing it. The passion of humility weighs it down; let it free itself without becoming proud! In the realm of the intelligence, you have surely observed, it is only actual imbeciles who never doubt their faculties. The man who can admit his own insufficiency at once gives proof of a rare perspicacity. In the same way, if you think you are poor it is because you are not. The only natures that are truly arid are those who do not recognize and never will recognize their own sterility.