Sur les mondes detruits le temps dort, immobile.”[3]
But do not rely overmuch on these heroic remedies. Let us take Candide’s[4] advice and cultivate our garden; let us water our cabbage-patch and accept things as they are.
Nature, a ruthless wet-nurse, knows nothing of pity. After pampering her charges, she takes them by the foot, whirls them round her head and dashes them to pieces against a rock. This is her way of diminishing the burden of her excessive fertility.
Death, well and good; but of what use is pain? When a mad Dog endangers the public safety, do we speak of inflicting atrocious sufferings upon him? We put a bullet into him; we do not torture him: we defend our own lives. In the old days, however, the law, with a great parade of ermine and red gowns, used to draw and quarter criminals, to break them on the wheel, to roast them at the stake, to burn them in a brimstone shirt: it pretended to expiate the crime by the horror of the torture. Morality has [[168]]made great strides since then; in our time, a more enlightened conscience compels us to treat the wrong-doer with the same clemency that we show to the mad Dog. We put an end to his existence without any stupid refinements of cruelty.
It even seems as though a day would come when legal murder will disappear from our codes: instead of killing the criminal, we shall strive to cure his infirmity. We shall fight the virus of crime as we fight that of yellow fever or of the plague. But when may we expect to see this absolute respect for human life? Will it take hundreds and thousands of years to come into being? Possibly. Conscience is so slow in emerging from its slough.
Ever since there have been men on this earth, morality has been far from saying its last word even on the subject of the family, that pre-eminently hallowed group. The ancient paterfamilias is a despot in his own house. He rules over his household as over the herd in his demesne; he has rights of life and death over his children, disposes of them at will, barters them in exchange for others, sells them into slavery, brings them up for his own sake and not for theirs. [[169]]Primitive legislation displays a revolting brutality in this respect.
Things have improved considerably since then, though the ancient barbarism has not been wholly abolished. Is there any lack of people among ourselves to whom morality is reduced to a fear of the police? Could we not find many who rear their children, as we breed Rabbits, to make a profit out of them? It has been necessary to formulate the promptings of conscience into a strict law in order to save the child, up to the age of thirteen, from the hell of the factories where the poor little fellow’s future was destroyed for a few halfpence a day.
Though animals have no morality, which is a thing troublesome to acquire and always undergoing improvement in the brains of the philosophers, they have their commandments, laid down in the beginning, immutable, imperious and as deeply imprinted in their being as the need to breathe and eat. At the head of the commandments stands maternal solicitude. Since life’s primary object is the continuation of life, it is also essential that the fragile beginnings of existence should be made possible. It is the mother’s duty to see to this. [[170]]
No mother neglects this duty. The dullest at least lay their germs in propitious places, where the new-born offspring will of themselves find the wherewithal to live. The best-endowed suckle, spoon-feed or store food for their children, build nests, cells or nurseries, often masterpieces of exquisite delicacy. But as a rule, especially in the insect class, the fathers become indifferent to their progeny. We, who have not yet laid aside all our old savagery, do the same to a small extent.
The decalogue orders us to honour our father and mother. This would be perfect, if it were not silent as to the duties of the father towards his sons. It speaks as once the tyrant of the family clan used to speak, the paterfamilias, referring everything to himself and caring but little for others. It took a long time to make people understand that the present owes itself to the future and that the father’s first duty is to prepare the sons for the harsh struggles of life.