VI
Life is, after all, such a precious thing that one must neither reject it entirely like those lazy egoists, who soften and contract it to such a degree that it loses all its value; nor partly reject it like those vigorous egoists, who claim to subordinate it to their choice.
The very act of opening one’s eyes to the light of day involves a debt of gratitude to those who have permitted us to see it. Formerly in the French family there was no doubt as to the goodness of life. The old French family wrote its own story in its “commonplace books.” These commonplace books were humble volumes of accounts, but it soon became the custom to jot down, besides the record of expenditure, the most important facts of private life, such as marriages, deaths, births. Then there were added a few reflections, which sufficed to express a whole range of feeling, a complete conception of life. We have a great number of these books. They recall the time of our fathers and speak to us with the majesty of a last will and testament. It is the gospel of the wise. And it preaches faith in life to those who are inspired by their fathers and are content to be worthy successors to them.
Though one should run through them all, one would not find a single denial of the goodness of life. These workmen, farmers, merchants, always welcome a new-born child with an expression of joy, even if he comes after many others. The forms of baptism are all acts of faith like the one that I came across in the book of Pagès, a merchant of Amiens, who is celebrating the birth of a ninth child: “The divine goodness, continuing to shed its blessings on our marriage, has favored us with the birth of a son.” In the same way, the domestic diary of Joseph de Sudre, of Avignon, is the story—I should say, the epic—of his efforts, his privations, his savings, in order to be able to bring up his numerous offspring. In spite of adverse circumstances and bad harvests, he neglects nothing that contributes to that end. The old French language used only one word to describe the maternal feeding and moral education of the child. It was the verb nourrir, to “bring up,” which we have degraded. Our Joseph de Sudre loses his son, a captain in the King’s service, a man of great promise. After his short and pathetic funeral speech he adds; “I have suffered poverty for him with joy.”
Faith in the goodness of life, acceptance of all its burdens, confidence in the future, were formerly the code of the French family. Since Jean Jacques Rousseau we have replaced belief in the goodness of life by faith in the innate goodness of man. It does not produce the same results.
If now we ask those geniuses who represent the highest achievements of humanity what we ought to think about life, how would they answer us? The great minds in art, literature, and history, are only great when they animate us, when they quicken the movement of our blood and stir our resolution. They realise for us the changing beauty of the world and the transient charm of our days. No artist is great without unlimited love of life. I will quote only one example, the most touching; that of Beethoven. Financial worries, family troubles, a most cruel malady—that deafness which shut him up within himself—moral loneliness, unrealised love, such was the record of his life. A weak soul would have given way to despair. From the depth of all his distress he undertook to celebrate joy, and he did so in his Ninth Symphony.
It is told of him that once, visiting a lady who had just lost her son and not finding words both strong and gentle enough to express his sympathy, he sat down at the piano and played. He played a song of sorrow, but a song of hope also. Thus in our suffering the great masters of art come to our help.
In the lives of great men we can learn courage and the taste for life. There is no reading more consoling, and I quite understand the influence exercised by Plutarch. I wish that biographies of the great men of France, well written, concise and vigorous, were recommended to be read, particularly by our young men. They would incite them to live well. They give us constant occasion to compare our empty days with those well-filled lives, and then we bewail our inaction, our idleness, the pettiness of our lot, which we do not know how to enlarge.
In the life of La Play, that admirable defender of the French family, I lately read this anecdote. He had just recovered from a serious illness, which had brought him to the brink of the grave and the course of which he had traced with his usual clearness. After his recovery, when he was asked what thoughts the feeling of his approaching end had provoked in him, he replied in these memorable words, which may serve me as a conclusion:
“From the brink of the grave I measured, not the vanity of life, but its importance.”