He will take his revenge all right, and for a scarf worth 1,500 francs will rook milady 12,000, and do it in a way which will leave her completely satisfied.
But in spite of this, the bourgeois is passionately fond of unutterable high-mindedness. On the stage he must have nothing but people completely disinterested in money. Gustave must shine by the light of high-mindedness alone and the bourgeois sheds tears of tender emotion. Without unutterable high-mindedness he will not even sleep quietly. And as to taking 12,000 francs instead of 1,500, this was his duty: he took it because he was virtuous.
To steal is wicked and mean – that’s what the galleys are for; the bourgeois is ready to forgive a great deal, but he will not forgive stealing even if you and your children should be dying of starvation. But should you steal for virtue’s sake, then, oh then, everything is forgiven unto you. It means you want to faire fortune* and amass many possessions, i.e. perform a natural and human duty. In other words the legal code very clearly defines stealing for low motives, i.e. for the sake of a piece of bread, and stealing in the name of highest virtue. The latter is completely assured, encouraged and is organized on an extraordinarily sound footing.
Why then – I am back at my old theme again – why then does the bourgeois look nervous and ill at ease? What causes him all this worry? The speechifiers? The phrase-mongers? But he can send them all to hell with one kick of his foot. Arguments of pure reason?
But reason has proved bankrupt in face of reality, and besides, the rational people themselves, the philosophers and metaphysicians, are now beginning to teach that there are no arguments of pure reason, that pure reason does not even exist in this world, that abstract logic is not applicable to humanity, that there is such a thing as John’s, Peter’s or Gustave’s reason, but there has never been any pure reason, that it is a baseless fiction of the eighteenth century.
Whom should he fear then? Workers? But workers are all of them capitalists too, in their heart of hearts: their one ideal is to become capitalists and amass as many things as possible; such is their nature. People don’t get their nature for nothing. All this requires centuries of growth and upbringing. National characteristics cannot easily be altered: it is not easy to get away from centuries-old habits which have become ingrained in one’s personality.
Peasants? But French peasants are capitalists par excellence, the blunt kind of capitalists, i.e. the very best and the most ideally perfect type of capitalist that can possibly be imagined. Communists? Or perhaps Socialists? But these fellows have considerably compromised themselves in their day, and in his heart of hearts the bourgeois has a profound contempt for them. In fact, these are the people he fears. But why should he fear them, really?
For did not the Abbé Sieyès in his famous pamphlet* predict that the bourgeois would be everything? “What is the tiers état? Nothing. What must it be? Everything.” Well, now, things have turned out as he foretold them. Of all the words spoken at the time they were the only ones to have come true, the only ones to have remained. But the bourgeois still refuses to believe somehow, despite the fact that all that has been said since Sieyès’words has collapsed and burst like a soap bubble.
Indeed soon after him was proclaimed the principle of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Excellent. What is liberté? Freedom. What freedom? Equal freedom for all to do anything one wants within the limits of the law. When can a man do anything he wants? When he has a million. Does freedom give everyone a million? No. What is a man without a million? A man without a million is not a man who does anything he wants, but a man with whom anything is done that anyone wants. And what follows? What follows is that besides freedom there is also equality, in fact equality before the law. There is only one thing to be said about this equality before the law – that the way in which it is now applied enables, indeed forces, every Frenchman to consider it as a personal insult.
What then remains of the formula? Fraternity, brotherhood. Now this is a most curious concept and, it must be admitted, constitutes the principal stumbling block in the West. The Western man speaks of brotherhood as of the great moving force of humanity, and does not realize that brotherhood cannot come about if it does not exist in fact. What is to be done? Brotherhood must be created at all costs. But it turns out that brotherhood cannot be created, because it creates itself, is given, exists in nature.
It was, however, found to be absent in French and in Western nature generally; what was found to exist instead was the principle of individuality, the principle of isolation, of intensified self-preservation, of self-seeking, of self-determination within one’s own personality or self, of contrast between this self, the whole of nature and the rest of humanity; and this contrast was considered as an independent and separate principle completely equal and equivalent in value to all that existed apart from itself.
Now such a contrast could not produce brotherhood. Why? Because within brotherhood, true brotherhood, it is not the individual personality, not the self, that should lay claim to its right of equality in value and importance with all the rest, but all this rest should itself approach the individual, the separate self laying this claim, and should itself, without being asked, recognize the individual as its equal in value and rights, i.e. the equal of all else that exists in the world.
Nay more, the individual who rebels and makes claims should much rather sacrifice both his personality and the whole of himself to society and not only claim his rights, but on the contrary, hand them over unconditionally to society. But the Western individual is not used to this kind of procedure: he demands by force, he demands rights, he wants to go shares.
And naturally no brotherhood results. There is, of course, the possibility of regeneration. But such a regeneration takes thousands of years, for ideas of this kind must, first of all, become completely ingrained and assimilated in order to become reality. Well then, you will reply, must one lose one’s individuality in order to be happy?
Is salvation to be found in the absence of individuality? My reply is no, on the contrary, not only should one not lose one’s individuality, but one should in fact, become an individual to a degree far higher than has occurred in the West. You must understand me: a voluntary, absolutely conscious and completely unforced sacrifice of oneself for the sake of all is, I consider, a sign of the highest development of individual personality, its highest power, highest self-possession and highest freedom of individual will.
Voluntarily to lay down one’s life for all, be crucified or burnt at the stake for the sake of all, is possible only at the point of the highest development of individual personality.
A strongly developed individual personality, completely sure of its right to be a personality and deprived of all fear for itself can, in fact, do nothing else out of its personality, can put it, that is, to no other use than to give away the whole of it to all, in order that others too may become personalities just as independent and happy. This is a law of nature; man normally tends towards it.
Here, however, there is a hair, one very, very thin hair, but if it gets into the machine, all will immediately crack and collapse. It is the following: there must not be in this case the slightest motive of personal gain. For example: I offer myself as a total sacrifice for all; and this is as it should be – I should sacrifice myself wholly and irrevocably, without consideration of gain, not thinking in the least that here I am, sacrificing my entire self to society and in exchange society will offer the whole of itself to me.
One must, in fact, make one’s sacrifice with the intention of giving away everything, and even wish that nothing be given to you in exchange and that no one should spend anything on you.
Now how is this to be done? Surely this is rather like trying not to think of a polar bear. Try and set yourself the problem of not thinking about a polar bear and you will see that the damned animal will be constantly in your thoughts. What can we do then? We can do nothing; it must be done of itself, the solution must exist in nature, must form an unconscious part of the nature
