The fear of living

by Henry Bordeaux

He answered me: “I will tell you briefly. They have no hope of dying, and their dark life is so vile that they are envious of every other fate. The world has no memory of them, and mercy and justice despise them. Do not speak of them; look and pass on....”

If the “Inferno” describes worse torments, it contains no words more scathing in their disdain than these which describe “those inert ones who are pleasing neither to God nor to his enemies.” The misers who carry burdens, the evil-tempered who struggle in a bog, the voluptuous dragged into an endless whirl-wind, the rogues plunged into a lake of boiling pitch, have deserved their punishment by their acts, and have asserted themselves in evil-doing. The others have asserted themselves neither in evil nor in good. Neither virtuous nor vicious, we do not know what they were. Dull, flabby, and soft, they have not left behind the memory of any personality. They scarcely lived; they were afraid to live.

For the fear of living means precisely that,—to deserve neither blame nor praise. It is the constant all-prevailing desire for peace. It is the flight from responsibilities, struggles, risks, and efforts. It is the careful avoidance of danger, fatigue, exaltation, passion, enthusiasm, sacrifice, every violent action, everything that disturbs and upsets. It is the refusal of life’s claims upon our hearts, our sweat, and our blood. In short, it is the pretence of living, while limiting life, while setting bounds to our destinies. It is that passive selfishness which would rather retrench its appetite than seek the food which it requires; the selfishness which is meanly content with a colorless, dull life, provided it is sure of meeting with no shocks, no difficulties, no obstacles, like the traveler who will only journey along plains and on rubber tires.

Must we quote examples? It is the fear of living which inspires a young man in the choice of a profession, which shows him the special advantages of an official career providing him, in return for work that is moderate in amount and does not take up much time, with a fixed salary and a pension; that modest dream which inspired Goncourt to make this epigram—“France is a country where one sows functionaries and reaps taxes.” Is it not this fear much more often than a keen sense of justice, that drives the weak and envious to that Socialism which would result in the establishment of an all-round equality of mediocrity?

It is certainly this fear which, when it does not lead to a comfortable, selfish, practical, bachelor’s life, prompts those marriages wherein one consults one’s lawyer rather than one’s heart, and thinks of income rather than of the advantages of beauty, physical and moral health, education, courage, ability and taste. Certain theories of the day, which on their critical side are not without justification, pretend to purify the sources of marriage by suppressing the consent of parents which is often too apt to overlook personal characteristics through consideration of the advantages to be gained, and by multiplying the facilities for union with the facilities for divorce; in a word, by associating marriage with those other unions which have no regard for the social order, into which they introduce anarchy. But marriage is the gateway of the family, the foundation of the home; its aim is to complete two lives by joining the one to the other and to bring other beings into the world. It cannot rely solely on that love which is commonly represented with bandaged eyes; for it is not purely an individual act, in that it both continues a tradition and perpetuates a race. Is it the importance of this race and this tradition which has to be considered, or is it only a petty ideal of practical happiness, comfortable and ignoble? Can man not feel himself fit to guide, guard, and direct the destinies of his own? Can woman not deprive herself of luxuries that are useless, or at least merely accessory? Would life, stripped of so many accessories and so many useless things, simplified but not diminished, become unacceptable? Must the place of moral force be taken by the heritage handed down by one’s father?

After marriage, we find again the fear of living in the dread of having children and the restraint of parenthood. To create life has become too heavy a responsibility, too irksome a burden, above all a nuisance; and it is thus that France has been called the land of only sons. By suppressing the choice of making a will the Civil Code has struck a heavy blow at the coherent unity of the family, grouped round its head and supported by its land. But we have lately been told by La Réforme Sociale of the method employed by the Normandy peasants, after having already been employed by so many of the bourgeoisie for the preservation of the inheritance. For the heir nominated by the father, or according to custom, is substituted the only son. In the mountains of Savoy the traveller often notices on the slopes bordering the roads, and sometimes even in the hollows of hidden valleys, shrines dedicated to Our Lady of Deliverance. Young, wives in the hope of having children used to make pilgrimages to these shrines. To-day young wives thank God for a barrenness which in former days was a reproach. A child is such a rarity that it is watched over and spoilt. Thus the fear of living has its effect even on those destinies which depend, so far as their beginnings are concerned, upon us only. So many fathers and mothers cannot consent to be separated from their children, and turn them aside from careers that are wider but more adventurous, from marriages which would take them far away but which would be morally advantageous to them; they weaken them, enervate or wear out their courage instead of arousing it, and in their sentimental selfishness impose on them a servitude which lowers their characters.

Of this fear of living, however, examples are to be found in our public life, in our social life, in the art which expresses the feeling of our times, in our institutions, even in matters of our health.

In public life, why is abstention from the franchise attributed to the moderate party, to those whom one calls or who call themselves “respectable” people?—as if there were such a thing as negative respectability! Quite recently men boasted in certain circles that they never voted; and, if they do not boast of this any more, they make their voting subordinate to hunting and entertainments, and it is fashionable to affect the greatest contempt for politics. In the life of a modern nation, rightly or wrongly, everything reduces itself to politics or is influenced by politics. This is a fact against which it is useless to protest. “The really useful work,” said Mr. Roosevelt, President of the United States, “is not accomplished by the critic who keeps out of the battle but by the man of action who bravely takes part in the struggle, without fear at the sight of blood or sweat.” We have so many of these critics who keep out of the battle and read the papers every morning in order to be able to discuss the affairs of the nation in a superior tone, who vainly regret the past, sigh over the future, and discourage those who undertake to show them the way.

The mere fact of living in society, of enjoying social rank, creates social duties. No one has the right to arrange his life separately, for no one person can dispense with the rest. To pay one’s taxes, grumbling all the time, is not enough. The wealth which represents accumulated work in the past does not exempt one from work. Since it furnishes the means of better and greater production, it should result, not in a class of people who enjoy it, but in a class of leaders; and a leader is one who understands how to take on himself the greatest share of the work and responsibility. But, to judge from observation, it would seem that wealth is only a factor in selfishness, an occasion for petty and ridiculous pleasures—as though wealth were more difficult to bear than poverty. The latter constantly furnishes examples of solidarity and devotion. In these strikes, too often gotten up by the leaders for their own purpose, do we not see the workmen suffering from hunger and poverty for the sake of one another, or subscribing a tithe of their modest wages to help their comrades in other towns and other trades? Do we not find Victor Hugo’s Pauvres Gens to the very life in those paragraphs which tell, in two or three lines, how at the death of some poor wretch with a family the neighbours have fought for possession of the orphaned children, even before the charitable organisations or private benevolence have had time to intervene?

There is no doubt that poverty is very painful to look upon. It disturbs our peace, our comfort, our natural forgetfulness of all that does not minister to our pleasures. People even consent to be generous—through the medium of someone else—to escape the inconvenience of sorrowful spectacles. We have our nerves, our refinement, our horror of the importunate, and we adroitly evade the demands of charity, although we can never deny the power of its appeal. “I do not want to see either illness or death,” says Hedda Gabler, Ibsen’s most morbid heroine, to her husband. “Spare me the sight of everything that is ugly.” And this æsthetic person, at the moment when she kills herself in disgust after having lived for herself alone, sees that ridicule and low ideals have infected like a curse everything she touched.