“ ‘The soul,’ says Pascal in another place, ‘finds nothing in herself to be pleased with—sees nothing but what, when she thinks of it, distresses her. This is what forces the soul to launch herself abroad. Busying herself with outward things, she seeks to forget her true condition. Her joy consists in this forgetfulness. To make her wretched, it is enough to compel her to look at herself and have no company but her own. . . . Men bustle about and load themselves with business, they think incessantly of their money and their honour, or of those of their friends; what a strange way, you will say, of trying to make oneself happy! What more could one do to make oneself miserable? Do you ask what one could do? One could deliver men from all these cares; for then they would see themselves, they would think of what they are; and that, precisely, is what they cannot bear. That is why, after all their business, if they have a little leisure, they try to waste that too in some amusement that will allow them to escape from themselves. . . . Men’s dislike of repose arises from the weakness of our condition and from another effective cause, which is this: our weak and mortal condition is so wretched that, when nothing prevents us from thinking of it, and we see nothing but ourselves, nothing can console us.’
“One would say (after reading this) that it was enough to remove all causes of external sensation or amusement to turn every individual into a deep thinker busy with self-analysis, with meditations on life and death and all that is most distressing in the condition of humanity. But to meditate thus one must put forth more effort, more intellectual activity than is necessary to follow the course of all the affairs of ordinary life. The activity which makes us think of ourselves is only a mode of that activity which, according to Pascal, prevents us from thinking of ourselves. If every mental labour tends only to steal us from ourselves, then we can only think of ourselves in order to forget our own existence, to distract ourselves from ourselves. The contradiction is strange and inexplicable.
“Banish all sensuous impressions, every cause of movement; for such men as know and love only the life of sensation, life will become a hideous blank, a complete negation of existence. But for those who are accustomed to intellectual life, thought will fill this void, or render it imperceptible. Even when they meditate on the nothingness of man, they will be leading a full life. The others will be unhappy, not because they have to think of themselves or their wretched condition, but because they can think of nothing at all. Capable only of feeling, they are unhappy when the customary stimulants of sensibility are removed. Pascal would have understood this well enough, if he had not been preoccupied with the idea of the fall of man, and the notion that man experiences an intimate feeling of his degradation whenever he is not distracted from without. But we find nothing of the kind in ourselves. It is only the philosophers who conceive, by dint of meditation, a better or higher state.”
Quand chez les débauchés l’aube blanche et vermeille
Entre en société de l’idéal rongeur,
Par l’opération d’un mystère vengeur,
Dans la brute assoupie un Ange se réveille.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.
Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l’esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que de l’horizon embrassant tout le cercle
Il nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;
Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
Où l’espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
S’en va battant les murs de son aile timide
Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;
Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses trainées
D’une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
Et qu’un peuple muet d’infâmes araignées
Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux;
Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.
Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l’Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l’Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.
As well in his life as in his lyrics, Baudelaire illustrates the generalizations formulated by Maine de Biran. The organic state of debauchees at dawn is such, that angels cannot help waking up in them. What were, a few hours before, temptations have utterly ceased to tempt. Nothing, not the most expensive of champagnes, not the loveliest and most willing of ladies, could possibly distract them, at six in the morning, from their serious reflections on their own sorry condition and the misère de l’homme. And what bustle of business or of pleasure could bring any alleviation to the lot of one who suffers what in my second extract the poet so magnificently describes himself as suffering?
It was in physiological terms—as the spleen or the black bile—that our fathers spoke of these states of misery. They may have been wrong in their choice of the offending organ; but they were quite right in their insistence that some organ or other was generally responsible. Such morbid conditions as accidie are seldom on the same plane as the spiritual remedies prescribed by the moralists.
Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers;
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.
GEORGE HERBERT.
Amor Fati
Weighing the steadfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds, like watchful clocks, the noiseless date
And intercourse of times divide,
Where bees at night get home and hive, and flowers,
Early as well as late,
Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers;
I would, said I, my God would give
The staidness of these things to man! for these
To his divine appointments always cleave,
And no new business breaks their peace:
The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine;
The flowers without clothes live,
Yet Solomon was never dressed so fine.
Man hath still either toys or care:
But hath no root, nor to one place is tied,
But ever restless and irregular,
About this earth doth run and ride.
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;
He says it is so far,
That he has quite forgot how to go there.
He knocks at all doors, strays and roams;
Nay, hath not so much wit as some stones have,
Which, in the darkest nights, point to their homes,
By some hid sense their Maker gave.
Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest
And passage through these looms
God ordered motion, but ordained no rest.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
It is man’s intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. An animal is without even the semblance of free will. Predestined by its instincts, it has no choice. In every circumstance it must do the thing that the age-long experience of its species has found to be, on the whole, most profitable for specific survival. Judged by utilitarian standards, what it does is, generally, the right thing. (This applies, of course, only to the animal’s behaviour in, statistically speaking, “normal” circumstances. In circumstances that are to any considerable extent unlike average circumstances, the animal almost always does the hopelessly wrong thing.)
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as a punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for example, would kill one of its foals in order to make the wind change its direction. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent, but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
Heaven, what an age is this! what race
Of giants are sprung up that dare
Thus fly in the Almighty’s face
And with his Providence make war.
I can go nowhere but I meet
With malcontents and mutineers,
As if in life was nothing sweet,
And we must blessings reap in tears.
O senseless Man that murmurs still
For happiness, and does not know,
Even though he might enjoy his will,
What he would have to make him so!
CHARLES COTTON.
The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth;
The great masters know the earth’s words and use them more than the audible words. . . .
The Earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out
Of all the powers, objects,
