How did this change happen? Naturally, imperceptibly, and painlessly. The initial shock was dreadful. I, who felt I deserved love and respect, who believed myself to be honoured and cherished as I deserved to be, suddenly found myself transformed into an awful monster, the like of which has never been seen before. I watched as an entire generation rushed headlong into this strange opinion without explanation, doubt, or shame, and without my even being able to discover the cause of this strange reversal. I struggled violently and succeeded only in further ensnaring myself. I wanted to force my persecutors to explain themselves to me, but they did not wish to. Having tormented myself for a long time but in vain, I had to stop to draw breath. And yet I still hoped, telling myself: ‘Such foolish blindness, such absurd prejudice could never win over the whole of the human race. There are men of good sense who do not share this madness; there are just souls who loathe deceit and traitors. Let us look; I shall perhaps find such a man in the end, and if I find one, they will be confounded.’ I looked in vain; I did not find him. The plot against me is universal, complete, and irrevocable, and it is certain that I shall end my days in this awful exile without ever working out the mystery behind it.
It is in this deplorable state that, after suffering for so long, instead of the despair which was to be, it seemed, my ultimate lot, I recovered my serenity, tranquillity, peace, and even my happiness, since every day of my life brings me the pleasure of remembering the previous day’s happiness, and I desire nothing more for the next day.
Where does this difference come from? From one thing alone. It is that I have learned to bear the yoke of necessity without complaining. It is that I was trying hard to hold on to a thousand different things at once and that, all these things having escaped me one by one and my being left only with my own self, I have finally regained a settled position. Under pressure from all sides, I keep my balance because, no longer clinging to anything, I lean only on myself.
When I used to protest so vehemently against public opinion, I still used to bear its yoke without realizing it. People want to be respected by those whom they respect, and as long as I was able to judge men, or at least some men, favourably, the judgements they made about me could not be a matter of indifference to me. I saw that the judgements made by the public are often fair, but I did not see that this very fairness was the product of chance, that the principles on which men base their opinions are drawn solely from their passions or their prejudices which are created by their passions, and that even when they make sound judgements, these too are often born of an unsound principle, such as when they pretend to honour the merits of a man who has enjoyed some success, not out of a spirit of fairness but in order to give themselves an appearance of impartiality while at the same time happily slandering the same man for other reasons.
But when, after long and fruitless searching, I saw that they all, without exception, remained committed to the most unjust and absurd plot that a demon could ever have invented; when I saw that, where I was concerned, reason was banished from every mind and justice from every heart; when I saw a frenzied generation giving itself over entirely to the blind fury of its leaders directed against an unfortunate individual who never harmed anyone, never wished anyone any harm, and never rendered evil for evil; and when, after looking in vain for ten years for a man, I had finally to snuff out my lantern* and exclaim: ‘There is none to be found’, then I began to see that I was alone on the earth, and I realized that my contemporaries were, where I was concerned, nothing but mechanical beings who acted only on impulse and whose actions I could calculate only according to the laws of motion. Whatever intention or passion that I could have supposed them to have in their souls, these would never have explained their behaviour towards me in any way I could comprehend. Thus it was that their inner state of mind stopped being of significance to me. All I saw in them now was masses that were stirred into action in different ways and that were devoid of all morality where I was concerned.
In all the ills that befall us, we think more about the intention behind them than the effect of them. A tile that falls off a roof can hurt us more but it will not injure us as much as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow sometimes misses, but the intention never does. The physical pain is what one feels the least in the onslaughts of fate, and when unfortunate people do not know whom to blame for their misfortunes, they blame destiny, which they personify and to which they give eyes and a mind with which it deliberately torments them. In this way, a gambler, angered by his losses, flies into a fury, but he does not know against whom. He imagines a fate which is deliberately bent on tormenting him, and finding something on which to feed his anger, he becomes incensed and enraged against the enemy he has created for himself. The wise man, who sees in all the misfortunes that befall him only the blows of blind necessity, has none of this mad agitation: he cries out in pain, but without losing his temper or getting angry; he feels only the physical effects of the evil to which he has fallen prey, and however much the blows may injure his body, not one of them can reach his heart.
To have come this far is impressive, but it is not far enough if one stops there. It would be like having cut down the evil but left the root behind. For this root is not in beings who are outside us; it is in ourselves, and it is from there that we have to work hard to pull it out completely. This is what I concluded as soon as I began coming to my senses. Since my reason revealed to me only absurdities in all the explanations I tried to give for what happened to me, I realized that the causes, instruments, and means of it all, which were unknown and inexplicable to me, should be of no significance to me whatsoever; that I should consider all the details of my destiny as the workings of simple fate in which I should presuppose no direction, intention, or moral cause; that I had to submit to it without arguing or resisting because to do that would be pointless; and that, since all that remained for me to do on earth was to consider myself a purely passive being, I should not waste on futile resistance to my destiny what strength I had left to withstand it. This is what I told myself; my reason and my heart acquiesced, but nevertheless I could feel that my heart was still grumbling. Where did this dissatisfaction come from? I looked for and found the answer: it came from my self-love which, having become indignant with men, now rebelled against reason.
This discovery was not as easy to make as one might imagine, since a persecuted, innocent man too often interprets his petty, individual pride as a pure love of justice. But equally, once the real source has been identified, it is easy to stem or at least divert. Self-esteem is the strongest motive felt by proud souls; self-love, which breeds illusions, disguises itself, and passes itself off as this self-esteem, but when the fraud is finally exposed and self-love can no longer hide itself, from that point on it is no longer to be feared, and although one may struggle to destroy it, one can at least overcome it with ease.
I was never greatly given to self-love, but this artificial passion had come to appear more noble to me when I was in the world, and above all when I became an author; I perhaps had less of it than other authors, but I still had an enormous amount. The terrible lessons I received soon cut it down to its original size: to begin with it rebelled against injustice, but in the end it treated it with disdain. Turning back in on my soul and severing the links with the outside which make it so demanding, and rejecting all comparisons and preferences, it was content for me to be good on my own terms; and so, as it became love of myself again, it returned to the natural order and freed me from the yoke of public opinion.*
From then on my soul was at peace again and I was almost perfectly happy. Whatever situation we may find ourselves in, it is only self-love that makes us constantly unhappy. When it falls silent and reason speaks, this consoles us at last for all the ills which we have been unable to avoid. It even destroys them, in so far as they do not affect us immediately, since the best way of avoiding their sharpest attacks is to stop paying attention to them. These ills are as nothing to the
person who does not think about them. Insults, reprisals, wrongs, outrages, and injustices are as nothing to the person who only sees in the hardships he suffers the hardship itself and not the intention behind it and whose place in his own self-esteem does not depend on the esteem that others may choose to show him. However men wish to see me, they cannot change my being, and in spite of their power and all their secret plots, I shall continue, whatever they may do, to be what I am in spite of them. It is true that their attitudes towards me have an influence on my actual situation: the barrier that they have placed between them and me denies me every source of subsistence and assistance in my old age and in my need. It even makes money useless to me, because it cannot buy me the help I need: there is no longer any exchange, mutual aid, or correspondence between them and me. Alone in the midst of them, I have only myself to turn to, and I am very weak at my age and in my situation. These misfortunes are great, but they have lost all their strength for me now that I know how to endure them without getting angry. The times when I feel real need are still rare. Foresight and imagination multiply their number, and it is these ongoing feelings that make us anxious and unhappy.* It means nothing to me, knowing that I shall suffer tomorrow: all I need to be at peace is not to suffer today. I am not affected by the ills I foresee, but only by those I actually feel, and this reduces them to very little. Alone, sick, and abandoned in my bed, I could die of poverty, cold, and hunger there without anyone caring. But what does it matter if I myself do not care and am no more affected than anyone else by my destiny, whatever it may be? Is it not something, above all at my age, to have learned to regard life and death, sickness and health, wealth and poverty, and fame and slander with equal indifference? All other old people worry about everything; I worry about nothing: whatever may happen, it is all a matter of indifference to me, and this indifference is not the fruit of my wisdom, but of my enemies. Let us learn, then, to treat these advantages as compensation for the suffering they inflict upon me. In making me impervious to adversity, they have done me more good than they would have done, had they spared me its attacks. If I had not experienced it, I might still fear it now, whereas by overcoming it, I no longer fear it.
In the midst of my life’s afflictions, this attitude allows me to indulge my natural insouciance almost as much as if I were living in the greatest prosperity. Apart from the brief moments when I am reminded by the things around me of my most painful anxieties, the rest of the time, following my inclinations and indulging the affections which attract me, my heart still feeds on the feelings for which it was created, and I enjoy them with imaginary beings who produce them and share them with me, as if these beings really existed. They exist for me, since I created them, and I do not worry about their betraying or abandoning me. They will last as long as my misfortunes themselves and will suffice to make me forget them.
Everything brings me back to the happy and sweet life for which I was born. I spend three quarters of my life either busy with instructive and even pleasant things, to which I am delighted to devote my mind and my senses, or with the children of my imagination, which I created according to my heart’s desires, whose feelings are nourished by contact with them, or else with myself, contented with myself and already full of the happiness I feel is owing to me. In all this, only love of myself is at work, and self-love has nothing to do with it. The same cannot be said of those sad moments I still spend among men, the plaything of their treacherous affections, their overblown and derisive compliments, and their honeyed malice. However I get caught, self-love always plays a role. The hatred and animosity I see in their hearts through their crude disguises fill my heart with pain, and the idea of so naively being duped compounds this pain with a very childish irritation, the product of a foolish self-love which I know full well is stupid but which I cannot control. The efforts I have made to become inured to these insulting and mocking looks are incredible. A hundred times I have walked along the avenues and in the most public of places with the sole aim of learning to put up with these cruel lies; not only was I unable to do so, I did not even make any progress, and all my painful yet fruitless efforts left me just as susceptible as before to being upset, hurt, or angered.
Dominated, whether I like it or not, by my senses, I have never been able to resist the impressions they make on me, and as long as an object affects them, my heart does not fail to be affected too; but these passing affections last only as long as the sensation that causes them. The presence of a hateful man affects me violently, but as soon as he has gone, the feelings stop; as soon as I no longer see him, I stop thinking about him. It does nothing to me to know that he is going to concern himself with me, for I am unable to concern myself with him. The suffering which I do not actually feel has not the slightest effect on me; the persecutor whom I do not see is as nothing for me. I realize this gives an advantage to those who control my destiny. So let them control it as they wish. I would prefer them to torment me unhindered than to be forced to think about them in order to protect myself from their blows.
The way my senses affect my heart is the one torment in my life. On the days when I see nobody, I no longer think about my destiny, I am no longer conscious of it, I no longer suffer, and I am happy and contented, with neither distraction nor obstacle in my way. But I rarely escape any physical assault, and when I am least thinking about it, a gesture, a sinister look that I catch sight of, a poisoned remark that I hear or a malicious person I meet is enough to upset me. All I can do in such circumstances is to forget as quickly as possible and run away. My heart’s distress disappears with the object that caused it, and I become calm again as soon as I am alone. Or if anything continues to worry me, it is the fear of chancing upon some other cause of pain. That is my only worry, but it is enough to spoil my happiness. I live in the middle of Paris. When I leave home, I long for the countryside and solitude, but they are to be found so far away that before I can breathe easily, I come across a thousand things that oppress my heart, and half of the day is spent in anguish before I have reached the refuge I was looking for. I am fortunate, though, when I am left to make my way in peace. The moment when I escape the train of the malevolent is one to be savoured, and as soon as I am under the trees and surrounded by greenery, it is as if I were in the earthly paradise, and I experience an inner pleasure as intense as if I were the happiest of mortals.
I remember perfectly how, in my brief periods of prosperity, these same solitary walks which today I find so sweet I then found insipid and tedious. When I was staying with someone in the country, the need for exercise and fresh air often made me go out alone, and, escaping like a thief, I would go walking in the park or in the countryside, but, far from finding the happy calm that I enjoy there today, I carried with me the agitation of futile ideas which had occupied me in the salon; the memory of the company I had left behind followed me in my solitude; the mists of self-love and the tumult of the world soured the freshness of the groves in my eyes and troubled my secluded peace. I had fled in vain to the depths of the woods: an importunate crowd followed me everywhere and veiled the whole of nature from me. It is only once I had cut myself off from social passions and their dismal retinue that I rediscovered nature and all her charms.
Convinced that it is impossible to repress these first, involuntary instincts, I have given up trying. Whenever I am under attack, I allow my blood to boil and anger and indignation to take hold of my senses; I grant nature this initial explosion which all my strength could neither stop nor hinder. I try simply to prevent it having any consequences before it has the chance to do so. My eyes flash, my face is aflame, my limbs tremble, and I have suffocating palpitations: these are purely physical reactions and reasoning can do nothing about them; but having let nature have this initial explosion, one can become one’s own master again as one gradually regains one’s senses; this is what for a long time I tried in vain to do, but in the end I have had more success. And instead of using my strength to resist in vain, I wait for the moment of v
ictory by letting my reason have its way, since it only speaks when it can make itself heard. Ah! Alas, what am I saying? My reason? It would be quite wrong of me to attribute this victory to my reason, for it has very little to do with it. Everything comes equally from a changeable temperament that is stirred up by an impetuous wind but which calms down again as soon as the wind stops blowing. It is my ardent nature which stirs me up, and my nonchalant nature which calms me down. I give way to whatever impulses I happen to feel: every shock provokes a rapid and short-lived reaction in me; as soon as the shock is over, the reaction ceases: nothing I am made to feel can last for long in me. All the ups and downs of fate and all men’s machinations have little hold over a man like me. In order for any suffering to last, the cause would have to be constantly renewed. For any pause, no matter how brief, is enough for me to regain composure. I am at men’s mercy as long as they can have an effect on my senses; but at the first moment of respite, I return to being what nature intended: whatever may happen, that is my most constant state and the one through which, in spite of destiny, I enjoy a kind of happiness for which I feel I was made. I have described this state in one of my reveries.* It suits me so well that I desire nothing other than for it to last, and my only fear is seeing it disturbed. The evil that men have done me in no way affects me; only the fear of the evil that they might yet do me is capable of unsettling me; but being certain that they have no new hold over me by which they could affect me for ever, I laugh at all their ploys and enjoy being me in spite of them.
NINTH WALK
HAPPINESS is a lasting state which does not seem to be made for man in this world. Everything on earth is in a continual flux which allows nothing to take a constant form. Everything changes around us. We ourselves change, and nobody can be sure of loving tomorrow what he loves today. For this reason, all our plans for perfect happiness in this life are idle dreams. Let us make the most of mental contentment when it comes to us; let us be careful not to be responsible for driving it away, but let us not make plans to tie it down either, because such plans are sheer folly. I have seen few if any happy men; but I have often seen contented hearts, and of all the things that have struck me, this is the one that has made me most contented too. I believe this is a natural consequence of the power that sensations have on my inner feelings. Happiness has no external sign: to recognize it, one would need to be able to read in the happy man’s heart; but contentment can be seen in the eyes, the bearing, the voice, and the walk, and it seems to communicate itself to the person who sees it. Is there any sweeter delight than seeing a whole people filled with joy on a feast day and all their hearts open up to the expansive rays of pleasure, which passes quickly but intensely through the clouds of life?
Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics) Page 14
