"I, who have no wish for glory," wrote Flaubert. He spoke of posterity—of that future and, consequently, non-existent time, to which so many second-rate energies sacrifice the one reality, the present hour. Since none of Flaubert's books can serve as a pretext for moral teaching, he was well-advised. He did not wish for glory, and he will not have it, unless Madame Bovary retains during the next century its equivocal reputation and finds a place, in schoolboy-tradition, among the celebrated bad books. This is little likely, seeing that Mademoiselle de Maupin is already hard to read. But that which cannot be said for the future, either of him or of any writer of the last half of the century, may be said for the past. Gautier and Flaubert have known glory—the glory that they accorded themselves in the invincible consciousness of their genius. Glory is a sensation of life and of strength; a food-sprite would taste it in a tree trunk.
How amusing it is to listen to the eloquent professor who declares: "This book will not last." But no book lasts, and yet all books last. Do you know Palemon, fable bocagère et pastorale, by the Sieur Frénicle?[16] Well, this book has lasted, since I have just read it, and since I resurrect one of its verses, which is not ugly:
O, que j'eus de plaisir à la voir toute nue!
It is time man learned at last to resign himself to annihilation, and even to enjoy that idea whose sweetness is incomparable. Writers might give the people the example, by resolutely abandoning their vainglorious hopes. They will leave a name which will grace the catalogues for several centuries, and works which will last as long as the matter upon which they are printed. This is a rare privilege, for which they ought to be willing to silence their complaints. And even were this illusory eternity to be denied them, as well as all present glory, why should that diminish their activity? It is to the passer-by, not to future humanity, that the wild cherry-tree offers its fruits; and even if no one passes, just as in the spring it has covered itself with snow, so it puts on its purple with the coming of summer. Life is a personal, immediate fact, which glides past the very moment it is perceived. It is bad reasoning to attach to this moment the age to come; for the present alone exists, and we must keep within the limits of logic in order to remain men. Let us be a little less primitive, not fancying that the next century will be the "double" of the present, and that our works will keep the position they hold to-day, or will have a worse. Our way of understanding Bérénice would afflict Racine, and Molière would gladly blow out the candles on nights when the Misanthrope is such a bore. Books have but one season. Trees, shrubs, or simple blades of grass, they die having sometimes sown their kind, and true glory for a writer would be to call forth a work whose shade would smother him. That would be true glory, because it would be a return to the noblest conditions of life. The witnesses of the past are never anything but paradoxes. They began to languish a few years, or even less, after their birth, and their old age drags on, sad and wrinkled, amid men who no longer either understand or love them. To desire immortality is to wish to live forever in the condition of Swift's "Struldbruggs."
"Such are the details imparted to me respecting the Immortals of this country...."—and man's sentiment continues to revolt against the idea of destruction, and the writer trembles at the idea of perennial obscurity. Our sensibility needs a tiny light in the far-off distance among the trees which line our horizon. That reassures the muscles, calms the pulses.
1900.
[1] Communication à l'Académie des Sciences (13 Avril 1896), certified and rendered more precise by later investigations which M. Quinton has explained to me. Here, without scientific apparatus, is what, as a result of precious conservations, would appear to be the general order in which the animals appeared, beginning with the fishes, and taking account only of those which have yet been covered:
I. Fish IV. Mammals V. Birds
II. Batracians a. Monotremata x. Primates:
III. Reptiles b. Marsupials (Lemurs, Monkeys,
c. Edentates Men)
d. Rodents y. Carnivora:
e. Insectivora (latest arrivals:
f. -- -- -- blue fox, white
g. -- -- -- bear)
h. -- -- -- z. Ruminants:
-- -- -- (last arrival:
-- -- -- reindeer)
The bearing of this list upon any question whatsoever of general philosophy is evident for all who know how to disassociate ideas. It would have thrilled Voltaire. For the rest, I claim the honour of having been the first to announce to the larger public these new scientific views, which will, logically, have a magnificent wealth of consequences. I have already made a less precise allusion to them, notably in the Wiener Rundschau, May 1899.
[2] Intelligence can thus be conceived as an initial form of instinct, in which case the human intelligence would be destined to crystallize into instinct, as has occurred in the case of other animal species. Consciousness would disappear, leaving complete liberty to the unconscious act, necessarily perfect in the limits of its intention. The conscious man is a scholar who will reveal himself a master the moment he has become a delicate but unerring machine, like bee and beaver.