To understand the world can well be compared to the peaceful, enduring wealth of the great landowner; to make discoveries is, in addition to this, to come into sudden, overflowing riches, to have one of these sudden strokes of fortune which double a man's capital by a windfall that seems like an inspiration.
The life of a child who grows up unconstrainedly is a chain of discoveries, an enriching of each moment, a succession of dazzling surprises.
I cannot go on without thinking of the beautiful letter I received to-day about my little boy. It said:
Your son knows how to find extraordinary riches, inexhaustible treasures, even in the barrenest fields, and when I set him on the grass, I cannot guess the things he is going to bring out of it. He has an admirable appreciation of the different kinds of soil; if he finds sand, he rolls in it, buries himself in it, grabs up handfuls, and flings them delightedly over his hair. Yesterday he discovered a mole-hole, and you cannot imagine all the pleasure he took in it. He also knows the joys of a slope which one can descend on one's feet or head over heels, or by rolling, and which is also splendid for somersaults. Every rise of ground interests him, and I wish you could see him pushing his cart up them. There is a little ditch where on the edge he likes to lie with his feet at the bottom and his body pressed tight against the slope. He played interminably the other day on top of a big stone. He kept stroking it; he had truly found a new pleasure there. And as for me, I find my wealth in watching him discover all these things.
It is thus a child of fifteen months gives man lessons in appreciation.
Unfortunately, most systems of education do their best to substitute hackneyed phrases for the sense of discovery. A series of conventions are imposed on the child; he ceases to discover and experience the objects in the world in pinning them down with dry, formal labels by the help of which he can recognize them. He reduces his moral life little by little to the dull routine of classifying pins and pegs and in this fashion begins the journey to maturity.
Discover! You must discover in order to be rich. You must not be satisfied to accept the night good humoredly, to go to sleep after a day empty of all discovery. There are no small victories, no negligible discoveries; if you bring back from your day's journey the memory of the white cloud of pollen the ripe plantain lets fall in May at the stroke of your switch, it may be little, but your day is not lost. If you have only encountered on the road the tiny urn of jade which the moss delightedly balances at the end of its frail stem, it may seem little, but be patient. To-morrow will perhaps be more fruitful. If for the first time you have seen a swarm of bees go by in search of a hive, or heard the snapping pods of the broom scattering its seeds in the heat, you have nothing to complain of, and life ought to seem beautiful to you. If, on that same day, you have also enriched your collection of humanity with a beautiful or an interesting face, confess that you will go to sleep upon a treasure.
There will be days when you will be like a peaceful sovereign seated under a tree: the whole world will come to render homage to you and bring you tribute. Those will be your days of contemplation.
There will be days when you will have to take your staff and wallet and go and seek your living along the highways. On these days you must be contented with what you gain from observing, from hunting. Have no fear: it will be beautiful.
It is sweet to receive; it is thrilling to take. You must by turns charm and compel the universe. When you have gazed long at the tawny rock, with its lichens, its velvety mosses, it is most amusing to lift it up. Then you will discover its weight and the little nest of orange-bellied salamanders that live there in the cool.