The Simple Life | Page 4

are as far as
ever from understanding even the elements of this most important law.
In our democracy, how many are there, great and small, who know,
from having personally verified it, lived it and obeyed it, this truth

without which a people is incapable of governing itself? Liberty?--it is
respect; liberty?--it is obedience to the inner law; and this law is neither
the good pleasure of the mighty, nor the caprice of the crowd, but the
high and impersonal rule before which those who govern are the first to
bow the head. Shall liberty, then, be proscribed? No; but men must be
made capable and worthy of it, otherwise public life becomes
impossible, and the nation, undisciplined and unrestrained, goes on
through license into the inextricable tangles of demagoguery.
* * * * *
When one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and
complicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and
their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which
is this: the confusion of the secondary with the essential. Material
comfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization--these things
constitute the frame of the picture; but the frame no more makes the
picture than the frock the monk or the uniform the soldier. Here the
picture is man, and man with his most intimate possessions--namely,
his conscience, his character and his will. And while we have been
elaborating and garnishing the frame, we have forgotten, neglected,
disfigured the picture. Thus are we loaded with external good, and
miserable in spiritual life; we have in abundance that which, if must be,
we can go without, and are infinitely poor in the one thing needful. And
when the depth of our being is stirred, with its need of loving, aspiring,
fulfilling its destiny, it feels the anguish of one buried alive--is
smothered under the mass of secondary things that weigh it down and
deprive it of light and air.
We must search out, set free, restore to honor the true life, assign things
to their proper places, and remember that the center of human progress
is moral growth. What is a good lamp? It is not the most elaborate, the
finest wrought, that of the most precious metal. A good lamp is a lamp
that gives good light. And so also we are men and citizens, not by
reason of the number of our goods and the pleasures we procure for
ourselves, not through our intellectual and artistic culture, nor because
of the honors and independence we enjoy; but by virtue of the strength

of our moral fibre. And this is not a truth of to-day but a truth of all
times.
At no epoch have the exterior conditions which man has made for
himself by his industry or his knowledge, been able to exempt him
from care for the state of his inner life. The face of the world alters
around us, its intellectual and material factors vary; and no one can
arrest these changes, whose suddenness is sometimes not short of
perilous. But the important thing is that at the center of shifting
circumstance man should remain man, live his life, make toward his
goal. And whatever be his road, to make toward his goal, the traveler
must not lose himself in crossways, nor hamper his movements with
useless burdens. Let him heed well his direction and forces, and keep
good faith; and that he may the better devote himself to the
essential--which is to progress--at whatever sacrifice, let him simplify
his baggage.

II
THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY
Before considering the question of a practical return to the simplicity of
which we dream, it will be necessary to define simplicity in its very
essence. For in regard to it people commit the same error that we have
just denounced, confounding the secondary with the essential,
substance with form. They are tempted to believe that simplicity
presents certain external characteristics by which it may be recognized,
and in which it really consists. Simplicity and lowly station, plain dress,
a modest dwelling, slender means, poverty--these things seem to go
together. Nevertheless, this is not the case. Just now I passed three men
on the street: the first in his carriage; the others on foot, and one of
them shoeless. The shoeless man does not necessarily lead the least
complex life of the three. It may be, indeed, that he who rides in his
carriage is sincere and unaffected, in spite of his position, and is not at
all the slave of his wealth; it may be also that the pedestrian in shoes
neither envies him who rides nor despises him who goes unshod; and

lastly, it is possible that under his rags, his feet in the dust, the third
man has a hatred