The Simple Life Part 3

On the various rungs of the bourgeois ladder people reply to the question, what is necessary to live? by figures varying with the degree of their ambition or education: and by education is oftenest understood the outward customs of life, the style of house, dress, table--an education precisely skin-deep. Upward from a certain income, fee, or salary, life becomes possible: below that it is impossible. We have seen men commit suicide because their means had fallen under a certain minimum. They preferred to disappear rather than retrench. Observe that this minimum, the cause of their despair, would have been sufficient for others of less exacting needs, and enviable to men whose tastes are modest.

On lofty mountains vegetation changes with the alt.i.tude. There is the region of ordinary flora, that of the forests, that of pastures, that of bare rocks and glaciers. Above a certain zone wheat is no longer found, but the vine still prospers. The oak ceases in the low regions, the pine flourishes at considerable heights. Human life, with its needs, reminds one of these phenomena of vegetation.

At a certain alt.i.tude of fortune the financier thrives, the club-man, the society woman, all those in short for whom the strictly necessary includes a certain number of domestics and equipages, as well as several town and country houses. Further on flourishes the rich upper middle cla.s.s, with its own standards and life. In other regions we find men of ample, moderate, or small means, and very unlike exigencies. Then come the people--artisans, day-laborers, peasants, in short, the ma.s.ses, who live dense and serried like the thick, st.u.r.dy growths on the summits of the mountains, where the larger vegetation can no longer find nourishment. In all these different regions of society men live, and no matter in which particular regions they flourish, all are alike human beings, bearing the same mark. How strange that among fellows there should be such a prodigious difference in requirements! And here the a.n.a.logies of our comparison fail us. Plants and animals of the same families have identical wants. In human life we observe quite the contrary. What conclusion shall we draw from this, if not that with us there is a considerable elasticity in the nature and number of needs?

Is it well, is it favorable to the development of the individual and his happiness, and to the development and happiness of society, that man should have a mult.i.tude of needs, and bend his energies to their satisfaction? Let us return for a moment to our comparison with inferior beings. Provided that their essential wants are satisfied, they live content. Is this true of men? No. In all cla.s.ses of society we find discontent. I leave completely out of the question those who lack the necessities of life. One cannot with justice count in the number of malcontents those from whom hunger, cold, and misery wring complaints. I am considering now that mult.i.tude of people who live under conditions at least supportable. Whence comes their heart-burning? Why is it found not only among those of modest though sufficient means, but also under shades of ever-increasing refinement, all along the ascending scale, even to opulence and the summits of social place? They talk of the contented middle cla.s.ses. Who talk of them? People who, judging from without, think that as soon as one begins to enjoy ease he ought to be satisfied. But the middle cla.s.ses themselves--do they consider themselves satisfied? Not the least in the world. If there are people at once rich and content, be a.s.sured that they are content because they know how to be so, not because they are rich. An animal is satisfied when it has eaten; it lies down and sleeps. A man also can lie down and sleep for a time, but it never lasts. When he becomes accustomed to this contentment, he tires of it and demands a greater. Man's appet.i.te is not appeased by food; it increases with eating. This may seem absurd, but it is strictly true.

And the fact that those who make the most outcry are almost always those who should find the best reasons for contentment, proves unquestionably that happiness is not allied to the number of our needs and the zeal we put into their cultivation. It is for everyone's interest to let this truth sink deep into his mind. If it does not, if he does not by decisive action succeed in limiting his needs, he risks a descent, insensible and beyond retreat, along the declivity of desire.

He who lives to eat, drink, sleep, dress, take his walk,--in short, pamper himself all that he can--be it the courtier basking in the sun, the drunken laborer, the commoner serving his belly, the woman absorbed in her toilettes, the profligate of low estate or high, or simply the ordinary pleasure-lover, a "good fellow," but too obedient to material needs--that man or woman is on the downward way of desire, and the descent is fatal. Those who follow it obey the same laws as a body on an inclined plane. Dupes of an illusion forever repeated, they think: "Just a few steps more, the last, toward the thing down there that we covet; then we will halt." But the velocity they gain sweeps them on, and the further they go the less able they are to resist it.

Here is the secret of the unrest, the madness, of many of our contemporaries. Having condemned their will to the service of their appet.i.tes, they suffer the penalty. They are delivered up to violent pa.s.sions which devour their flesh, crush their bones, suck their blood, and cannot be sated. This is not a lofty moral denunciation. I have been listening to what life says, and have recorded, as I heard them, some of the truths that resound in every square.

Has drunkenness, inventive as it is of new drinks, found the means of quenching thirst? Not at all. It might rather be called the art of making thirst inextinguishable. Frank libertinage, does it deaden the sting of the senses? No; it envenoms it, converts natural desire into a morbid obsession and makes it the dominant pa.s.sion. Let your needs rule you, pamper them--you will see them multiply like insects in the sun.

The more you give them, the more they demand. He is senseless who seeks for happiness in material prosperity alone. As well undertake to fill the cask of the Danades. To those who have millions, millions are wanting; to those who have thousands, thousands. Others lack a twenty-franc piece or a hundred sous. When they have a chicken in the pot, they ask for a goose; when they have the goose, they wish it were a turkey, and so on. We shall never learn how fatal this tendency is.

There are too many humble people who wish to imitate the great, too many poor working-men who ape the well-to-do middle cla.s.ses, too many shop-girls who play at being ladies, too many clerks who act the club-man or sportsman; and among those in easy circ.u.mstances and the rich, are too many people who forget that what they possess could serve a better purpose than procuring pleasure for themselves, only to find in the end that one never has enough. Our needs, in place of the servants that they should be, have become a turbulent and seditious crowd, a legion of tyrants in miniature. A man enslaved to his needs may best be compared to a bear with a ring in its nose, that is led about and made to dance at will. The likeness is not flattering, but you will grant that it is true. It is in the train of their own needs that so many of those men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress, and I don't know what else. They cannot take a step without asking themselves if it might not irritate their masters. How many men and women have gone on and on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too many needs and could not resign themselves to simple living. There are many guests in the chambers of Mazas who could give us much light on the subject of too exigent needs.

Let me tell you the story of an excellent man whom I knew. He tenderly loved his wife and children, and they all lived together, in France, in comfort and plenty, but with little of the luxury the wife coveted.

Always short of money, though with a little management he might have been at ease, he ended by exiling himself to a distant colony, leaving his wife and children in the mother country. I don't know how the poor man can feel off there; but his family has a finer apartment, more beautiful toilettes, and what pa.s.ses for an equipage. At present they are perfectly contented, but soon they will be used to this luxury--rudimentary after all. Then Madam will find her furniture common and her equipage mean. If this man loves his wife--and that cannot be doubted--he will migrate to the moon if there is hope of a larger stipend. In other cases the roles are reversed, and the wife and children are sacrificed to the ravenous needs of the head of the family, whom an irregular life, play, and countless other costly follies have robbed of all dignity. Between his appet.i.tes and his role of father he has decided for the former, and he slowly drifts toward the most abject egoism.

This forgetfulness of all responsibility, this gradual benumbing of n.o.ble feeling, is not alone to be found among pleasure-seekers of the upper cla.s.ses: the people also are infected. I know more than one little household, which ought to be happy, where the mother has only pain and heartache day and night, the children are barefoot, and there is great ado for bread. Why? Because too much money is needed by the father. To speak only of the expenditure for alcohol, everybody knows the proportions that has reached in the last twenty years. The sums swallowed up in this gulf are fabulous--twice the indemnity of the war of 1870. How many legitimate needs could have been satisfied with that which has been thrown away on these artificial ones! The reign of wants is by no means the reign of brotherhood. The more things a man desires for himself, the less he can do for his neighbor, and even for those attached to him by ties of blood.

The destruction of happiness, independence, moral fineness, even of the sentiment of common interests--such is the result of the reign of needs.

A mult.i.tude of other unfortunate things might be added, of which not the least is the disturbance of the public welfare. When society has too great needs, it is absorbed with the present, sacrifices to it the conquests of the past, immolates to it the future. After us the deluge!

To raze the forests in order to get gold; to squander your patrimony in youth, destroying in a day the fruit of long years; to warm your house by burning your furniture; to burden the future with debts for the sake of present pleasure; to live by expedients and sow for the morrow trouble, sickness, ruin, envy and hate--the enumeration of all the misdeeds of this fatal regime has no end.

On the other hand, if we hold to simple needs we avoid all these evils and replace them by measureless good. That temperance and sobriety are the best guardians of health is an old story. They spare him who observes them many a misery that saddens existence; they insure him health, love of action, mental poise. Whether it be a question of food, dress, or dwelling, simplicity of taste is also a source of independence and safety. The more simply you live, the more secure is your future; you are less at the mercy of surprises and reverses. An illness or a period of idleness does not suffice to dispossess you: a change of position, even considerable, does not put you to confusion. Having simple needs, you find it less painful to accustom yourself to the hazards of fortune. You remain a man, though you lose your office or your income, because the foundation on which your life rests is not your table, your cellar, your horses, your goods and chattels, or your money.

In adversity you will not act like a nursling deprived of its bottle and rattle. Stronger, better armed for the struggle, presenting, like those with shaven heads, less advantage to the hands of your enemy, you will also be of more profit to your neighbor. For you will not rouse his jealousy, his base desires or his censure, by your luxury, your prodigality, or the spectacle of a sycophant's life; and, less absorbed in your own comfort, you will find the means of working for that of others.

VII

SIMPLE PLEASURES

Do you find life amusing in these days? For my part, on the whole, it seems rather depressing, and I fear that my opinion is not altogether personal. As I observe the lives of my contemporaries, and listen to their talk, I find myself unhappily confirmed in the opinion that they do not get much pleasure out of things. And certainly it is not from lack of trying; but it must be acknowledged that their success is meagre. Where can the fault be?

Some accuse politics or business; others social problems or militarism.

We meet only an embarra.s.sment of choice when we start to unstring the chaplet of our carking cares. Suppose we set out in pursuit of pleasure.

There is too much pepper in our soup to make it palatable. Our arms are filled with a mult.i.tude of embarra.s.sments, any one of which would be enough to spoil our temper. From morning till night, wherever we go, the people we meet are hurried, worried, preoccupied. Some have spilt their good blood in the miserable conflicts of petty politics: others are disheartened by the meanness and jealousy they have encountered in the world of literature or art. Commercial compet.i.tion troubles the sleep of not a few. The crowded curricula of study and the exigencies of their opening careers, spoil life for young men. The working cla.s.ses suffer the consequences of a ceaseless industrial struggle. It is becoming disagreeable to govern, because authority is diminis.h.i.+ng; to teach, because respect is vanis.h.i.+ng. Wherever one turns there is matter for discontent.

And yet history shows us certain epochs of upheaval which were as lacking in idyllic tranquillity as is our own, but which the gravest events did not prevent from being gay. It even seems as if the seriousness of affairs, the uncertainty of the morrow, the violence of social convulsions, sometimes became a new source of vitality. It is not a rare thing to hear soldiers singing between two battles, and I think myself nowise mistaken in saying that human joy has celebrated its finest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance. But to sleep peacefully on the eve of battle or to exult at the stake, men had then the stimulus of an internal harmony which we perhaps lack. Joy is not in things, it is in us, and I hold to the belief that the causes of our present unrest, of this contagious discontent spreading everywhere, are in us at least as much as in exterior conditions.

To give one's self up heartily to diversion one must feel himself on a solid basis, must believe in life and find it within him. And here lies our weakness. So many of us--even, alas! the younger men--are at variance with life; and I do not speak of philosophers only. How do you think a man can be amused while he has his doubts whether after all life is worth living? Besides this, one observes a disquieting depression of vital force, which must be attributed to the abuse man makes of his sensations. Excess of all kinds has blurred our senses and poisoned our faculty for happiness. Human nature succ.u.mbs under the irregularities imposed upon it. Deeply attainted at its root, the desire to live, persistent in spite of everything, seeks satisfaction in cheats and baubles. In medical science we have recourse to artificial respiration, artificial alimentation, and galvanism. So, too, around expiring pleasure we see a crowd of its votaries, exerting themselves to reawaken it, to reanimate it Most ingenious means have been invented; it can never be said that expense has been spared. Everything has been tried, the possible and the impossible. But in all these complicated alembics no one has ever arrived at distilling a drop of veritable joy. We must not confound pleasure with the instruments of pleasure. To be a painter, does it suffice to arm one's self with a brush, or does the purchase at great cost of a Stradivarius make one a musician? No more, if you had the whole paraphernalia of amus.e.m.e.nt in the perfection of its ingenuity, would it advance you upon your road. But with a bit of crayon a great artist makes an immortal sketch. It needs talent or genius to paint; and to amuse one's self, the faculty of being happy: whoever possesses it is amused at slight cost. This faculty is destroyed by scepticism, artificial living, over-abuse; it is fostered by confidence, moderation and normal habits of thought and action.

An excellent proof of my proposition, and one very easily encountered, lies in the fact that wherever life is simple and sane, true pleasure accompanies it as fragrance does uncultivated flowers. Be this life hard, hampered, devoid of all things ordinarily considered as the very conditions of pleasure, the rare and delicate plant, joy, flourishes there. It springs up between the flags of the pavement, on an arid wall, in the fissure of a rock. We ask ourselves how it comes, and whence: but it lives; while in the soft warmth of conservatories or in fields richly fertilized you cultivate it at a golden cost to see it fade and die in your hand.

Ask actors what audience is happiest at the play; they will tell you the popular one. The reason is not hard to grasp. To these people the play is an exception, they are not bored by it from over-indulgence. And, too, to them it is a rest from rude toil. The pleasure they enjoy they have honestly earned, and they know its cost as they know that of each sou earned by the sweat of their labor. More, they have not frequented the wings, they have no intrigues with the actresses, they do not see the wires pulled. To them it is all real. And so they feel pleasure unalloyed. I think I see the sated sceptic, whose monocle glistens in that box, cast a disdainful glance over the smiling crowd.

"Poor stupid creatures, ignorant and gross!"

And yet they are the true livers, while he is an artificial product, a mannikin, incapable of experiencing this fine and salutary intoxication of an hour of frank pleasure.

Unhappily, ingenuousness is disappearing, even in the rural districts.

We see the people of our cities, and those of the country in their turn, breaking with the good traditions. The mind, warped by alcohol, by the pa.s.sion for gambling, and by unhealthy literature, contracts little by little perverted tastes. Artificial life makes irruption into communities once simple in their pleasures, and it is like phylloxera to the vine. The robust tree of rustic joy finds its sap drained, its leaves turning yellow.

Compare a _fete champetre_ of the good old style with the village festivals, so-called, of to-day. In the one case, in the honored setting of antique costumes, genuine countrymen sing the folk songs, dance rustic dances, regale themselves with native drinks, and seem entirely in their element. They take their pleasure as the blacksmith forges, as the cascade tumbles over the rocks, as the colts frisk in the meadows.

It is contagious: it stirs your heart. In spite of yourself you are ready to cry: "Bravo, my children. That is fine!" You want to join in.

In the other case, you see villagers disguised as city folk, countrywomen made hideous by the modiste, and, as the chief ornament of the festival, a lot of degenerates who bawl the songs of music halls; and sometimes in the place of honor, a group of tenth-rate barnstormers, imported for the occasion, to civilize these rustics and give them a taste of refined pleasures. For drinks, liquors mixed with brandy or absinthe: in the whole thing neither originality nor picturesqueness.

License, indeed, and clownishness, but not that _abandon_ which ingenuous joy brings in its train.

This question of pleasure is capital. Staid people generally neglect it as a frivolity; utilitarians, as a costly superfluity. Those whom we designate as pleasure-seekers forage in this delicate domain like wild boars in a garden. No one seems to doubt the immense human interest attached to joy. It is a sacred flame that must be fed, and that throws a splendid radiance over life. He who takes pains to foster it accomplishes a work as profitable for humanity as he who builds bridges, pierces tunnels, or cultivates the ground. So to order one's life as to keep, amid toils and suffering, the faculty of happiness, and be able to propagate it in a sort of salutary contagion among one's fellow-men, is to do a work of fraternity in the n.o.blest sense. To give a trifling pleasure, smooth an anxious brow, bring a little light into dark paths--what a truly divine office in the midst of this poor humanity!

But it is only in great simplicity of heart that one succeeds in filling it.

We are not simple enough to be happy and to render others so. We lack the singleness of heart and the self-forgetfulness. We spread joy, as we do consolation, by such methods as to obtain negative results. To console a person, what do we do? We set to work to dispute his suffering, persuade him that he is mistaken in thinking himself unhappy.

In reality, our language translated into truthful speech would amount to this: "You suffer, my friend? That is strange; you must be mistaken, for I feel nothing." As the only human means of soothing grief is to share it in the heart, how must a sufferer feel, consoled in this fas.h.i.+on?

To divert our neighbor, make him pa.s.s an agreeable hour, we set out in the same way. We invite him to admire our versatility, to laugh at our wit, to frequent our house, to sit at our table; through it all, our desire to s.h.i.+ne breaks forth. Sometimes, also, with a patron's prodigality, we offer him the beneficence of a public entertainment of our own choosing, unless we ask him to find amus.e.m.e.nt at our home, as we sometimes do to make up a party at cards, with the _arriere-pensee_ of exploiting him to our own profit. Do you think it the height of pleasure for others to admire us, to admit our superiority, and to act as our tools? Is there anything in the world so disgusting as to feel one's self patronized, made capital of, enrolled in a claque? To give pleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing the ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the diversions last. There is no worse kill-joy than the ego. We must be good children, sweet and kind, b.u.t.ton our coats over our medals and t.i.tles, and with our whole heart put ourselves at the disposal of others.

Let us sometimes live--be it only for an hour, and though we must lay all else aside--to make others smile. The sacrifice is only in appearance; no one finds more pleasure for himself than he who knows how, without ostentation, to give himself that he may procure for those around him a moment of forgetfulness and happiness.

When shall we be so simply and truly _men_ as not to obtrude our personal business and distresses upon the people we meet socially? May we not forget for an hour our pretensions, our strife, our distributions into sets and cliques--in short, our "parts," and become as children once more, to laugh again that good laugh which does so much to make the world better?

Here I feel drawn to speak of something very particular, and in so doing to offer my well-disposed readers an opportunity to go about a splendid business. I want to call their attention to several cla.s.ses of people seldom thought of with reference to their pleasures.

It is understood that a broom serves only to sweep, a watering-pot to water plants, a coffee-mill to grind coffee, and likewise it is supposed that a nurse is designed only to care for the sick, a professor to teach, a priest to preach, bury, and confess, a sentinel to mount guard; and the conclusion is drawn that the people given up to the more serious business of life are dedicated to labor, like the ox. Amus.e.m.e.nt is incompatible with their activities. Pus.h.i.+ng this view still further, we think ourselves warranted in believing that the infirm, the afflicted, the bankrupt, the vanquished in life's battle, and all those who carry heavy burdens, are in the shade, like the northern slopes of mountains, and that it is so of necessity. Whence the conclusion that serious people have no need of pleasure, and that to offer it to them would be unseemly; while as to the afflicted, there would be a lack of delicacy in breaking the thread of their sad meditations. It seems therefore to be understood that certain persons are condemned to be _always_ serious, that we should approach them in a serious frame of mind, and talk to them only of serious things: so, too, when we visit the sick or unfortunate; we should leave our smiles at the door, compose our face and manner to dolefulness, and talk of anything heartrending. Thus we carry darkness to those in darkness, shade to those in shade. We increase the isolation of solitary lives and the monotony of the dull and sad. We wall up some existences as it were in dungeons; and because the gra.s.s grows round their deserted prison-house, we speak low in approaching it, as though it were a tomb. Who suspects the work of infernal cruelty which is thus accomplished every day in the world! This ought not to be.

When you find men or women whose lives are lost in hard tasks, or in the painful office of seeking out human wretchedness and binding up wounds, remember that they are beings made like you, that they have the same wants, that there are hours when they need pleasure and diversion. You will not turn them aside from their mission by making them laugh occasionally--these people who see so many tears and griefs; on the contrary, you will give them strength to go on the better with their work.

And when people whom you know are in trial, do not draw a sanitary cordon round them--as though they had the plague--that you cross only with precautions which recall to them their sad lot. On the contrary, after showing all your sympathy, all your respect for their grief, comfort them, help them to take up life again; carry them a breath from the out-of-doors--something in short to remind them that their misfortune does not shut them off from the world.

And so extend your sympathy to those whose work quite absorbs them, who are, so to put it, tied down. The world is full of men and women sacrificed to others, who never have either rest or pleasure, and to whom the least relaxation, the slightest respite, is a priceless good.

And this minimum of comfort could be so easily found for them if only we thought of it. But the broom, you know, is made for sweeping, and it seems as though it could not be fatigued. Let us rid ourselves of this criminal blindness which prevents us from seeing the exhaustion of those who are always in the breach. Relieve the sentinels peris.h.i.+ng at their posts, give Sisyphus an hour to breathe; take for a moment the place of the mother, a slave to the cares of her house and her children; sacrifice an hour of our sleep for someone worn by long vigils with the sick. Young girl, tired sometimes perhaps of your walk with your governess, take the cook's ap.r.o.n, and give her the key to the fields.

You will at once make others happy and be happy yourself. We go unconcernedly along beside our brothers who are bent under burdens we might take upon ourselves for a minute. And this short respite would suffice to soothe aches, revive the flame of joy in many a heart, and open up a wide place for brotherliness. How much better would one understand another if he knew how to put himself heartily in that other's place, and how much more pleasure there would be in life!

I have spoken too fully elsewhere of systematizing amus.e.m.e.nts for the young, to return to it here in detail.[B] But I wish to say in substance what cannot be too often repeated: If you wish youth to be moral, do not neglect its pleasures, or leave to chance the task of providing them.

You will perhaps say that young people do not like to have their amus.e.m.e.nts submitted to regulations, and that besides, in our day, they are already over-spoiled and divert themselves only too much. I shall reply, first, that one may suggest ideas, indicate directions, offer opportunities for amus.e.m.e.nt, without making any regulations whatever. In the second place, I shall make you see that you deceive yourselves in thinking youth has too much diversion. Aside from amus.e.m.e.nts that are artificial, enervating and immoral, that blight life instead of making it bloom in splendor, there are very few left to-day. Abuse, that enemy of legitimate use, has so befouled the world, that it is becoming difficult to touch anything but what is unclean: whence watchfulness, warnings and endless prohibitions. One can hardly stir without encountering something that resembles unhealthy pleasure. Among young people of to-day, particularly the self-respecting, the dearth of amus.e.m.e.nts causes real suffering. One is not weaned from this generous wine without discomfort. Impossible to prolong this state of affairs without deepening the shadow round the heads of the younger generations.

We must come to their aid. Our children are heirs of a joyless world. We bequeath them cares, hard questions, a life heavy with shackles and complexities. Let us at least make an effort to brighten the morning of their days. Let us interest ourselves in their sports, find them pleasure-grounds, open to them our hearts and our homes. Let us bring the family into our amus.e.m.e.nts. Let gayety cease to be a commodity of export. Let us call in our sons, whom our gloomy interiors send out into the street, and our daughters, moping in dismal solitude. Let us multiply anniversaries, family parties, and excursions. Let us raise good humor in our homes to the height of an inst.i.tution. Let the schools, too, do their part. Let masters and students--school-boys and college-boys--meet together oftener for amus.e.m.e.nt. It will be so much the better for serious work. There is no such aid to understanding one's professor as to have laughed in his company; and conversely, to be well understood a pupil must be met elsewhere than in cla.s.s or examination.