The Simple Life | Page 6

to spoil
our zest for life, have really but one object--to preserve us from the evil
of having lived in vain. That is why they are constantly leading us back
into the same paths; that is why they all have the same meaning: Do not
waste your life, make it bear fruit; learn how to give it, in order that it
may not consume itself! Herein is summed up the experience of
humanity, and this experience, which each man must remake for
himself, is more precious in proportion as it costs more dear. Illumined

by its light, he makes a moral advance more and more sure. Now he has
his means of orientation, his internal norm to which he may lead
everything back; and from the vacillating, confused, and complex being
that he was, he becomes simple. By the ceaseless influence of this same
law, which expands within him, and is day by day verified in fact, his
opinions and habits become transformed.
Once captivated by the beauty and sublimity of the true life, by what is
sacred and pathetic in this strife of humanity for truth, justice, and
brotherly love, his heart holds the fascination of it. Gradually
everything subordinates itself to this powerful and persistent charm.
The necessary hierarchy of powers is organized within him: the
essential commands, the secondary obeys, and order is born of
simplicity. We may compare this organization of the interior life to that
of an army. An army is strong by its discipline, and its discipline
consists in respect of the inferior for the superior, and the concentration
of all its energies toward a single end: discipline once relaxed, the army
suffers. It will not do to let the corporal command the general. Examine
carefully your life and the lives of others. Whenever something halts or
jars, and complications and disorder follow, it is because the corporal
has issued orders to the general. Where the natural law rules in the
heart, disorder vanishes.
I despair of ever describing simplicity in any worthy fashion. All the
strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything that
consoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark paths,
everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid goal and a
boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those who
have made another object of their desires than the passing satisfaction
of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the art of living is to
know how to give one's life.

III
SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT

It is not alone among the practical manifestations of our life that there
is need of making a clearing: the domain of our ideas is in the same
case. Anarchy reigns in human thought: we walk in the woods, without
compass or sun, lost among the brambles and briars of infinite detail.
When once man has recognized the fact that he has an aim, and that this
aim is to be a man, he organizes his thought accordingly. Every mode
of thinking or judging which does not make him better and stronger, he
rejects as dangerous.
And first of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himself
with his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: it isn't
a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter. The
implements are all in place: everything indicates that this assemblage of
means is arranged with view to an end. Throw the room open to apes.
They will climb on the benches, swing from the cords, rig themselves
in draperies, coif themselves with slippers, juggle with brushes, nibble
the colors, and pierce the canvases to see what is behind the paint. I
don't question their enjoyment; certainly they must find this kind of
exercise extremely interesting. But an atelier is not made to let
monkeys loose in. No more is thought a ground for acrobatic evolutions.
A man worthy of the name, thinks as he is, as his tastes are: he goes
about it with his whole heart, and not with that fitful and sterile
curiosity which, under pretext of observing and noting everything, runs
the risk of never experiencing a deep and true emotion or
accomplishing a right deed.
Another habit in urgent need of correction, ordinary attendant on
conventional life, is the mania for examining and analyzing one's self at
every turn. I do not invite men to neglect introspection and the
examination of conscience. The endeavor to understand one's own
mental attitudes and motives of conduct is an essential element of good
living. But quite other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant
observation of one's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like
a piece of mechanism. It is a waste