Chapter II (1)

"The three greatest pessimists who ever existed," said Schopenhauer one day,--"that is to say, Leopardi, Byron and myself,--were in Italy during the same year, 1818-1819, and did not make one another's acquaintance!" One of these "great pessimists," Leopardi, happened just at this time to be writing a little dialogue that might well be reprinted at the beginning of every year. It would always seem new.

Life is bad, says Leopardi, and here is the proof: nobody has ever found a man who would wish to live his life over again exactly as it happened at first:--who would wish even, at the beginning of a new year, to have it exactly the same as the year just past. What we love in life is not life such as it is, but rather life such as it might be, such as we desire it to be.

But since this Dialogue Between The Passer-By And The Almanac-Vendor, if it has ever been translated, has remained buried in unreadable volumes, here is a version of this excellent, though somewhat bitter, page:

_The Almanac-Vendor_.--Almanacs, new almanacs! New calendars! Will you buy some almanacs, sir?

_The Passer-by_.--Almanacs for the new year?

_Vendor_.--Yes, sir.

_Passer-by._ Do you think it will be a happy one,--this coming year?

_V._--Oh, yes, sir! Certainly!

_P._--As happy as the one just past?

_V._--Oh! Far, far more so!

_P._--As happy as the one before that?

_V._--Far, far more.

_P._--As happy as which other one, then? Wouldn't you be glad to have the coming year the same as any one of the recent years?

_V._--No, sir. No. That would hardly please me.

_P._--How long have you been selling almanacs?

_V._--For twenty years, sir.

_P._--Which of those twenty years would you prefer the new year to resemble?

_V._--I? I don't know.

_P._--Can't you recall some year that seemed happy to you?

_V._--Upon my word, no, sir.

_P._--Yet life is a good thing, isn't it?

_V._--Oh, yes indeed!

_P_.--You would be willing to live these twenty years all over again, and even all the years since you were born?

_F._--I should say so, my dear sir. And would to God that were possible!

_P._--Even if this life were to be exactly the same that you lived before,--no more no less,--with the same pleasures and the same sorrows?

_F._--Oh, that! Indeed no!

_P._--Then what sort of life would you wish?

_F._--Just a life, that's all,--such as God would grant me, without any other conditions.

_P._--A life left to accident, of which nothing would be known in advance,--a life such as the coming year brings?

_F._--Exactly.

_P._--That's what I, too, would desire, if I had my life to live over again,--what I and everybody else would wish for. But that means that fate, up to this very day, has treated us badly. And it is rather easy to see that the common opinion is, that in the past evil has triumphed greatly over good, since nobody, if he had to go over the same road again, would consent to be reborn. That life which is good is not the life we know, but the life we do not know,--the life ahead of us. Beginning with the new year, fate is going to deal kindly with us,--with you and me and everybody,--and we are going to be happy.

_V._--Let us hope so.

_P._--Well, let me see your handsomest almanac.

_V._--Here you are, sir. It costs thirty cents.

_P._--Here's your money.

_V._--Thanks, sir. See you again. Almanacs! New almanacs! New calendars!

There is, perhaps, a slight error in Leopardi's reasoning. It is not because our life has been bad that it would be a burden to begin it all over again. Even a happy life lived twice would scarcely possess any greater pleasures. The element of curiosity must be taken into account. There is no human being, however resigned to the monotony of a becalmed existence, who does not in the bottom of his heart hope for some unforeseen event.

But is it really true that this idea is not contained in Leopardi's dialogue? It is there, although hidden, and doubtless I have taken it from there. Wherever it may come from, it is true, at least if it be applied to life as a whole. For everybody cherishes the remembrance of hours, and sometimes days, which he would gladly live over again. It is often one of the occupations of men to seek to create in their lives circumstances that plunge them for a moment back into the joys of the past, even if they must pay for this momentary resurrection with subsequent pain....

Leopardi, who was a distinguished philologist, an excellent Hellenist, a great poet and an ingenious philosopher, endowed with eloquence, was unable to discover happiness or even peace in the exercise of these multiple gifts. His health was of the most wretched; his heart, left empty, sounded in his bosom at the slightest shock; he was timid and his nerves quivered at every jar, like those harps which were in fashion during his youth. He was born four years before Victor Hugo and died young, without having tasted fame, while Manzoni, who was destined to fill an entire century, had been for a long time known throughout Europe. Is the source of Leopardi's pessimism to be sought among these divers causes? That is hard to believe. The invalid, far from cursing life, is filled with hope; he is an optimist, and wishes to get well; he knows that he will recover. He is not the person with whom to speak of the infinite vanity of all things. It would rouse his fury to listen to the condemnation of those boons that are momentarily out of his reach but which he is preparing to seize and reconquer. Scarron was more sickly and more deformed than Leopardi, yet he was none the less a gay, all too gay, fellow. As for not being understood, or at least, not being received at one's proper value,--there is nothing in that to make a healthy mind pessimistic. The superior man, after all, scorns the opinion of men so long as it remains only an opinion,--that is to say, a matter without practical consequences. And this was Leopardi's situation, for he could have lived in independence upon his scant, but honorable patrimony.

Pessimism is related to character, and character is an expression of physiology. The case with writers, philosophers and poets is exactly the same as with men of other professions. They are gay, sad, witty, morose, avaricious, liberal, ardent, lazy, and their talent assumes the color of their character.

If one were to make a study of literature from this point of view,--a procedure which would not lack interest,--one would very probably discover a great number of pessimists, or, as they were called formerly, sad spirits. There are few men of worth who have not at times found a bitter taste to life, even among those who, like M. Renan, professed eternal joviality. There is no great writer without great sensibility; he is capable of keen joys, and of excessive pain as well. Now pain, which is depressive, leaves deeper traces in life than joy. If intelligence does not rule, if it does not intervene to establish a hierarchy, or an equilibrium of sensations, then the sad ideas triumph because of their superior numbers and power. Renan's serenity is perhaps only the apathy of indifference; Goethe's serenity represents the victory of intellect over sensibility.

Pessimism is neither a religious sentiment nor a modern one, although it has often assumed religious form and although the most celebrated pessimists belong to the nineteenth century. The Greeks, who knew everything, knew the despair of living: the pessimism of Heraclitus had preceded the optimism of Plato. There are few pages more bitter than those in which the naturalist Pliny summarizes the miseries of human life. Nature casts man upon the earth; of all animals he is the only one destined to tears; he cries from the moment of birth and never laughs before his fortieth day. And after having enumerated all the evils and the passions which desolate mankind, Pliny concludes by approving the ancient Greek epigram: "It is best not to be born or to die as soon as possible."

Leopardi has scarcely done more than paraphrase these elementary ideas, but this he has done with abundance and ingeniousness. So funereal is his spirit that he throws a veil of mourning over the most charming things: "Enter a garden of plants, herbs and flowers," he says, "even in the gentlest season of the year. You cannot turn your glance in any direction without discovering traces of misery. All the members of this vegetable family are more or less in a 'state of suffering.' There a rose is wounded by the sun that has given it life; it shrivels, blanches, and withers away. Further on, behold that lily, whose most sensitive, most vital parts are being sucked by a bee.... This tree is infested by a swarm of ants; others, by caterpillars, flies, snails, mosquitoes; one is wounded in its bark, tortured by the sun, which penetrates into the wound; the other is attacked in the trunk or in its roots. You will not find in all this garden a single small plant whose health is perfect.... Every garden is, in a way, nothing but a vast hospital,--a place even more lamentable than a cemetery,--and if such beings are endowed with sensibility, it is certain that non-existence would to them be far preferable to existence." Leopardi here commits the error of him who wishes to prove too much. His pessimism abdicates reason, and the sentence about nothingness being preferable to life, which in Pliny was beautiful and philosophic, acquires in the Italian philosopher a somewhat ridiculous sentimentality.

Jouffroy, perhaps with this page in mind, has put tender souls on guard against any belief in the sensibility of plants: let us leave that to the reveries of Pythagoras,--so noble, from other standpoints,--or to the fairy tales, whither we may go of an evening in spring to pluck the rose that speaks. But if he had possessed a more intimate knowledge of nature, and of the relations between insects and plants, what a picture at once admirable and cruel would not Leopardi have been able to draw! Those mosquitoes, upon whom he looks as allies of the caterpillars in ravaging the leaves of some cherry-tree, are ichneumons, and it is the caterpillars themselves that they have come to attack, piercing them with a long, hollow borer which permits the mosquito to lay in the very flesh of the caterpillar eggs which, when they become larvae, will gnaw the living flesh like terrible little vultures.

If Leopardi had known this and many another thing,--if he had known that every living creature is in turn prey and depredator, in turn eater and eaten, he would have considered with even greater bitterness the arrival of the new year, which hastens from the very first days of its springtime, to impart full strength and full passion to the instincts of life and devastation.

Leopardi despairs: he is, therefore, a weakling. His humble almanac-vendor is made of better clay. He hopes; he wishes to live and live happily; he possesses at least a little of that energy without which other gifts prove only too often to be blemishes and burdens.

THE COLORS OF LIFE

It was formerly the custom in such provinces as Normandy, for example, or Britanny, to consecrate children to the color blue. The vow was limited to a certain number of years,--seven, fourteen, or twenty-one,--probably because of the virtues of the number seven, as considerable as they are mysterious. Most often the final figure was decided upon,--the age of reason, says the Church, which considers it never too soon to place its hand upon the conscience and the will. It was charming for the little girls, though somewhat monotonous; on the contrary, it was troublesome to the little boys. But it seems the custom was efficacious in warding off the illnesses of childhood, and that it drew to the "consecrated one" the protection of the gods--I mean, of the Virgin--and of the celestial court. The divine personages, inhabiting the sky, which is blue, were in fact seen in blue by the popular imagination, and to adopt their color and assume their livery was to put oneself in the shelter of their power and win their good grace.

Women, through an analogous, though much more complicated and varied symbolism, often select a color and match all the elements of their toilette to it as far as fashion permits. It is exceedingly difficult to ascertain the reason for their choice. They themselves are at a loss for explanation. Often they believe that they have chosen the color or the shade that best frames their complexion or that harmonizes best with the color of their hair. But often they go astray. Those who are fond of bright blue would look far prettier in very pale green or in deep red, for example. They admit this, but for form's sake only: a secret power holds them to the color that they have desired through instinct,--the color under which they will live, under which they will know love and all the joys and all the tears of life.

Not only women, but men have their color. We seem to do the choosing, but it is nature that imposes it upon us,--it is she that dedicates us to the shade that shall be our favorite atmosphere.

One who will never feel merry amid red hangings will grow cheerful amid green or yellow. Astrologers say that we are dominated by a planet that controls our destiny. This is not very easy to understand. On the contrary, nobody would deny the rôle played in our lives by colors. Would such and such a woman have evoked the passion which is today her happiness if her gown, on that evening, had been rose and not mauve? Who can tell? It requires so little to entrance the eye and so little to provoke it. A false note, and the concert that was thrilling us fills us with laughter. If Cleopatra's nose, said Pascal, had been shorter, the face of the world would have been changed. As for me, I believe that Cleopatra rather resembled Dido, who, according to Scarron's mot, was "somewhat snub-nosed, in the African style." Perhaps it was really the happy shade of her tunic, the harmonious hue of her peplum that vanquished Antony and brought him to the feet of the queen of Egypt. History, which so often gossips beside the point, is mute upon this capital question. Nevertheless, were I to write the life of Cleopatra, I should write it in green,--Nile green, of course,--and nobody, I believe, would have the effrontery to contradict me.

Writing lives or stories in such and such a color is one of the things I have recently tried to do, and the attempt has in some instances proved to be a rather delicate affair to manage. There are blue women; there are rose ones, and mauve and red; that is to say, they may be scarcely represented except in association with one of these colors or shades. Conceiving an old maid who had retained her good looks, who was very pious and yet of very equivocal habits, I could see her only in violet. The story is violet from beginning to end; it was impossible for me to introduce a different hue; I would have felt that I was committing a gross offence against harmony. The lady is vowed to violet: to place upon her head a blue or rose hat would have been a sort of sacrilege which would have terrified even her. Can this be the reason why her narrow life as an old maid found late in life so many happy, if perverse, days? Without a doubt, for violet, which is her color, is also her logic, and it is always well to have respected the logic of one's destiny.

Now, in thus amusing myself, I have not made any pretensions toward reforming esthetics, nor toward revolutionizing the conditions of the art of writing. I have simply been playing with a box of pastels, loving the colors for themselves, one by one, somewhat in the manner of the great and singular artist Odilon Redon, whose flowers are so real that one is moved to smell them.

We have our favorite colors. Tastes and colors.... This aphorism is not at all so frivolous as one might believe. Nietzsche, who was by no means a superficial spirit, cites it willingly. It is an argument that favors individualistic philosophy and freedom of thought. It is an argument, too, and not the least valuable, that supports determinism and the philosophy of necessity. For the colors we love are not dictated by choice but by a secret sympathy which it is impossible for us to reason out. The study of tastes and colors should form part of psychology. Perhaps there might even be discovered here the elements of a new science. Being fond of red or of green is not a matter to be dismissed with indifference.

A preference for red indicates rudeness, and the fondness for green reveals tenderness of character. It is known, moreover, that red is an excitant, while green induces repose, and meditation. The studios of the firm of Lumière, where photographic plates are prepared, were at first provided with red panes of glass; but this led to such effervescence,--the men and women, after several hours of red gazed at one another with such sparkling eyes, that it was necessary to have recourse to panes of a soothing color. Men that come from large cities, overexcited by the disharmony of sounds and colors, can regain a bit of calm only amid the forests and the prairies or at the sea-shore, which is green when it is not blue. Blue is the most soothing of colors, and it is doubtless thanks to its blue sky that the South may endure the brilliancy of its springs, the purple of its autumns.

Color has its importance. Before making friends with anyone, before undertaking the conquest of a woman, observe what their favorite colors are. Think at the same time of your own, and try to make happy combinations. If you are fond of red, take to yourself a dash of blue, thus forming an agreeable lilac; and if it is blue that charms you, do not reject yellow; this combination will give you all the shades of green and will assure you lifelong peace. How many misfortunes have been caused by the maladroit mixing of hostile colors! But above all, beware of violet. There is no more perfidious hue; it is, among the colors of life, the least stable and the most hypocritical.

THE ART OF SEEING

Mon voyage dépeint
Vous sera d'un plaisir extrême.
Je dirai: J'étais là; telle chose m'advint:
Vous y croirez être vous-même.

(The tale of my travels will be extremely pleasant
to you, I'll say: "I was there; such and such things
happened to me." You'll imagine that you're there
yourself.)

"Alas!" the loving dove would have replied, if he had taken courses under M. Claparède, professor of psychology at the University of Geneva. "Alas! What faith may I have in your testimony? You will tell me what will take place in your head and I'll not have the consolation, as a reward for your absence, of knowing your real adventures!" But this was not what La Fontaine had in mind. In his day they believed in the value of testimony offered in good faith. An eye-witness inspired full confidence. People bowed with mute deference before the honest man who said: "I was there; such and such things happened to me." And the custom continues. Nevertheless, in certain places, they are beginning to show a little less confidence. They have been observing and reflecting and have arrived at the conclusion that the majority of men report far less what they have seen than what they believed they saw. They repeat much less what they heard than what they believed they heard. A dozen persons having witnessed an accident will present a dozen different accounts, or, at least, accounts that do not harmonize exactly. Still better, among the dozen there will be one, perhaps, who will have seen nothing, and another who will have seen the contrary to what his companions saw.

I have made many observations in regard to this subject. One of these observations is that, if by accident I have had direct and exact knowledge of an event reported by a newspaper, the newspaper report will very often be in contradiction to the facts personally known to me. Another observation is, that every time I have read the description of a place that is familiar to me, the description, in almost every case, has seemed to me inexact, incomplete,--in short, false. Huysmans was a meticulous observer; more than any one else he possessed the gift of seeing things well; his sharp eye pierced and bored into men and things. More, he had a passion for exactness, and he would scour all Paris to verify the color of a door or the height of a house. He would have considered it a sort of literary crime to describe anything he had not seen with his own eyes. Well! This man with the miraculous eye said to me one day, speaking of the Bièvre, a little stream which at that time still flowed in the open, between the fortifications and the Botanical Garden: "There is where you may see the last poplars of Paris." This old Parisian, who loved the banks of the Seine, had never beheld its poplars, some of which are truly wonderful, as at the Pont Royal,--the poplars which grow almost along its entire distance. A year ago, a group of us, all serious-minded gentlemen of Paris and of the quartier, were discussing the number of arches that comprise the bridge of Saints-Pères. One may walk every day across a bridge without knowing the number of its arches, but one of us who confessed that he had looked at this bridge from the barge or from the quay perhaps a thousand times in his life, was unable to settle the matter for us. I knew a librarian who was exceedingly fond of the Memoirs of Casanova and who mangled his name, calling him always, and emphatically, Casanova de Seignalt instead of Seingalt, which is the right form. I have been conducting regularly, in the same review, for some twelve years, a chronicle under the title _Epilogues_; one of my friends, a fellow staff-member of the same review, has said or written to me at least ten times: "I have read your latest _Episodes_...."

This reminds me of the English historian Froude, with whom Dr. Gustave Le Bon recently entertained us, dealing with this very question of testimony. Froude possessed a genius for seeing things exactly opposite to what they really were. A curious example of this is given; it concerns the description he gives of the town of Adelaide, Australia. "I saw at our feet," he said, "in the plain cut by a stream, a city of one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of which not one has ever known or ever will know, the least uncertainty upon the matter of the regular return of his three meals per day." Now, Adelaide is built upon a height, and, at the time Froude visited it, its population, half as numerous as he said it was, was a prey to a terrible famine. And this is the testimony of a grave personage, with a European reputation,--one of the English historians most esteemed by those who have not read him.

"If Froude had lived several centuries earlier," adds M. Le Bon, "all his affirmations would have been held as precious documents, since they came from an eye-witness whose good faith there was no reason for suspecting. How many very serious histories are written with details as little trustworthy as this!"

Jules Simon was astounded "that so many honest persons contradict each other when giving accounts of events that they have witnessed. At every step I encounter this frightful spectacle. Man is least sure of his own spirit. He is not sure of his eyes: the fact is that his eyes and his memory are in strife with his imagination. He believes that he is seeing; he believes that he is remembering, and he is really inventing."

This is what explains those ancient and modern, and even contemporary tales of miracles, apparitions and wonderful happenings that are often attested by a large number of witnesses. The number of witnesses signifies nothing, nor does their honesty or their good faith. On the contrary, good faith, in the matter of testimony, is an element to be on guard against. It is far better to deal with bad faith, which betrays itself always by some blunder. Saint Paul attests that Christ resurrected was beheld by more than five hundred persons; well, it is a matter of doubt now as to whether there ever existed a person named Jesus and surnamed the Christ. Thousands upon thousands of persons in the Middle Ages, and even later, saw the Devil, and, adds M. Le Bon, if unanimous testimony may be considered as proving anything, one might say that the Devil is the personage whose existence has been best demonstrated. Gregory of Tours, an historian of evident good faith, was present during his life at hundreds of miracles, which he describes most complaisantly. He saw them, controlled them: yet the majority of them are pure extravagances, inadmissible in our day even by the most obtuse of pietists. Contemporary history and Judicial reports prove to us constantly the worthlessness of evidence. At the time of the _Liban_ catastrophe, when the vessel went down in broad daylight as the result of a collision, it was impossible to learn from the surviving members of the crew whether the captain was or was not on the bridge at the time of the accident. Some had seen him there, while others swore that he was not on the bridge. In a certain criminal trial it becomes necessary to identify a person who has been but glimpsed; they succeed in identifying him, but only by influencing the witnesses, placing them on the possible track or upon that which justice desires them to follow. According to M. Claparède's experiments, a person of whom only a glimpse has been got, if the witnesses are not influenced, is hardly recognized by one person in four, and at that hesitantly.

Really good observers are very rare. Napoleon pretended to recall every face he had looked upon once. This has become legendary, but it is not quite so. He confused all the names. One day, he sees a certain face in a deputation and thinks that he recognizes it. It was a scholar who was well known in that day, named Ameilhon. The following dialogue takes place: "Aren't you Ancillon?"--"Yes, sire, Ameilhon."--"Librarian of Sainte-Geneviève?"--"Yes, sire, of the Arsenal."--"Continuator of the History of the Ottoman Empire"--"Yes, sire, of the History of the Low Empire." After which Ameilhon, enchanted with the honor, went off, declaring everywhere most emphatically: "The emperor is amazing. He knows everything." And we, in our turn, might say: men are amazing; they imagine that it is enough to have witnessed an event to be sure of that event! The matter is far more complicated. Certainty is difficult to acquire.

Nothing is more difficult than that which is too easy. Nobody would imagine that he could play the violin without having learned how; and if he did, the least attempt would at once extinguish his pretense. But to see? What more simple than that? All one has to do is open one's eyes. "I saw it," is the reply of a witness whose story is contested; "Do you take me for a fellow suffering from hallucination?" Precisely, or else for a purblind person, as the case may be. As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is useless to them, or disagreeable.

The great rule by which almost everything may be explained, is the rule of utility. Certain artisans were visiting the Universal Exposition. They looked about, walked along, and had seen nothing. Farther on they continued to look about, and this time they stopped; they had caught sight of a machine that could be of use to them in their particular work. We do not see that to which we are indifferent. The image glides by, fades and dies out before having had time to become fixed, and we make no effort to retain it.

I knew a colonial functionary who had travelled around the globe, and who spent years in our various colonies in Africa, Asia and America. Once in a while I am tempted to question him. But he is at a loss for reply. Occupied only with his advancement and with his family affairs, he really saw nothing. Of Singapore, the strange city whence a young writer, M. Cassel, has brought us such dazzling, magic impressions, this fine fellow said to me: "Pretty place; a few houses in the European style." I have asked many a question in my life, but never have I received so stupid an answer. But I understand that questions are always indiscreet. To ask anybody what he has seen is to subject him to torture. He sinks a fishing-line into his memory and brings up nothing. Then he tries to invent, and the result is wretched. Hence, for tourists, the great usefulness of the guide-books. Without these books they would have seen nothing, and without them they would recall nothing. "What did I see at Rome?" They open to the marked page. "Rome, Rome?" said a hosier whom his wife had dragged off to Italy. "Ah! I remember! That's the place where I purchased this miserable flannel waistcoat."

In company of those who see nothing or almost nothing are those who see crooked or inversely altogether,--those who allow themselves to be guided far less by their eyes than by their sensibility, who believe that a thing exists because it seems to them that they have received such an impression. Whoever has a department under him, said a telegraph inspector, has been able to prove how inexact the reports he receives often are, and how necessary it is to verify the assertions of agents as to events in which they have been actors or spectators. The account of an event that has just taken place is founded upon the impressions received rather than upon direct observation. At the end of several days the imagination has come into play and it adds the finishing touch to the crystallization of one's conviction. At this moment, if there was an initial error, it has become ineradicable. This explains all those disputes between the public and administrative agents. Each one is actuated by good faith, but each has beheld the event in a different light,--that of his own particular interest,--the one intent upon upholding respect for law or rule, the other eager only to violate it or circumvent it. If the case is taken to court, the judge, whose authoritarian tendency is very marked, almost always finds the agent of the law in the right. It is nevertheless quite certain that the agent is not to be believed more than once out of two times on the average. Even this proportion is perhaps highly exaggerated.

It so happens that according to special plans there is, at the University of Geneva, a large window opening upon an interior corridor, which is to the left as the students enter opposite the janitor's lodge. One day, M. Claparède questioned fifty-four students as to the existence of this window, which they passed by every day. Do you know how many asserted categorically that the window did not exist? Forty-four! Astounded, M. Claparède declares that such a collective testimony is disconcerting and discouraging. And who would not agree with him? Who does not think with horror, after this experiment, of all those criminal trials where a verdict is rendered on the strength of witnesses? testimony? M. Claparède comes to the conclusion that a single witness may be right despite many opposing witnesses whose stories agree. Unanimity itself should be severely controlled, and he adds, quite in accord with my own notions upon the matter: "One is led to ask whether it is not the rule to disregard those objects about us which are without interest to us, and if it is not only by accident, and exceptionally, that such objects leave an imprint upon the sensitive plate of our memory?" Accident, of a surety, or else a particularly sensitive plate. If indeed our eye functions mechanically somewhat in the manner of a photograph lens, we are compelled, in order not to clutter the storehouse of our memory, to make a choice of the images which we classify therein. In this an instinct guides us, though not always infallibly, and calls to our attention those images useful to the conservation or the defense of our life.

Without education, without civilized habits, which constantly increase the number of our requirements of every kind, we should, like animals, have need to retain but a small number of images.

The life of animals moves in a rather restricted circle, and there is not one of their acts that is not dictated by utility. Men, too, obey the rule of utility, but their imagination magnifies this field of the useful in a singular manner, and they find themselves obliged, for the purpose of mere existence, to open their memory to a considerable number of images to which animals are absolutely indifferent. We behold on a table, in a single glance, the plates, the food, the flowers, the glasses and all the rest; the dog sees only the food; the flowers that give us pleasure, the general arrangement that charms us, leave him utterly insensible to their attraction. There are also things to the sight of which we are ourselves insensible: those which are neither beautiful nor ugly, nor useful, nor harmful, neither good nor bad,-- everything that is not worth the trouble of being qualified, everything that is neutral to our senses as to our imagination. If, then, we are asked to give testimony regarding the existence of these objects, regarding the reality of those things that cause us neither pain nor pleasure, and which, therefore, we have neglected to retain in our memory, we should be greatly embarrassed.

In general, when we are questioned we have a tendency to affirm that which we believe probable and to deny the case that seems to us improbable. Thus, in the case of the window, this window, opening upon an interior corridor, seemed to the students who were questioned quite improbable, since the thing was useless, even absurd.

In the second place, and this is very important, we hold in our minds a series of types of fact to which invariably we relate the new events that we happen to witness. If, for example, we are in principle assured that every automobile accident is due to the drivers of these vehicles, it is with difficulty that we admit, even if we have seen it with our own eyes, that the accident was the fault of the victim. The case will be just the contrary with the chauffeur: to him, the victim is always in the wrong. But if, for us, the chauffeur is always wrong, our attitude is equally unreasonable. In either case, the images will be distorted and if we are questioned, we will reply with lies uttered in all good faith: "This is so because it ought to be so." M. Claparède even goes so far as to admit that the evidence of various individuals may be erroneous, even if they all agree. I am of his opinion, because it is quite normal that the same interest or the same absence of interest unconsciously guides witnesses of diverse origin and condition. All the ancient explorers of the Kerguelen Isles saw there only sterile and uninhabitable lands. Yet in recent days a colony composed of men from Havre and Norwegians has established itself there and finds the country rough, but healthful and well suited not only to fishing but also to pasturage.

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance.

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE

A river is a beautiful thing. It runs along, its sings, it laughs, it glints in the sunlight and becomes darker beneath the trees. Sometimes one may see the bottom, where there are stones and grasses, while at times it is a sombre abyss that fills one with shudders. The river comes from afar and goes no one knows whither. True, people say that it has a beginning and that its source lies yonder, in the mountains, but that is not at all so certain. What is a source? When you see a river, it is already a river and it never occurs to you that it may ever have been only a tiny ribbon of water trickling down from a rock. In olden days, when the world was happy, things were far different. Rivers flowed from a marble pitcher which was held in the hands of an eternally youthful, drooping maiden. But the wicked god of the Christians, who is not fond of maidens? beauty, broke those marble pitchers; the mothers of rivers died of grief and now the rivers are born by accident, as best they may be. If we are not so well informed about their birth, we know their life and their death. Their life is to bound along or to flow nonchalantly on, to prattle over the pebbles and dream amid the rushes. Often, when traversing the blooming meadows they love to spread across the grass. If dikes or tree-trunks bar the way they are provoked and even wax furious. But if it is a mill that rises before them, they turn its wheels with docile promptness, and continue on their way unperturbed. The river is the mother of men and trees, of beasts and plants. Without the river there are no fish; there are no birds. There are no crops, no flowers, no wine, no cattle, and man flees, parched by the sun. After having given life, the river has two ways of dying; either it expands into the bosom of a larger river or flows directly to mingle with the sea; the sea is the vast cemetery of all the rivers,--of the smallest as well as the greatest. But the river that dies is nevertheless just as eternal as the ocean that receives it into its depths. The clouds are born of the sea, and the wind wafts them toward the forests, where they make rain and swell the streams. There is in the world a circulation of water as in our bodies there is a circulation of blood. All this is well regulated. The sea loves the river. It comes to meet the stream and sends it as greeting the salt tang of its waves. The river fears this infinitude. For a long time it resists. At last, the sweet waters yield and melt under the powerful kisses of the brine: the swell of the waves lulls the wedded waters to rest.

The river is a person. It has a name. This name is very ancient, because the river, although perpetually young, is very old. It existed before men and before birds. Ever since men were born they loved the rivers, and as soon as they learned how to speak they gave them names. Even when we no longer understand them, the names of the rivers are the most beautiful in the world. There is the Gironde and the Adour; the Loire and the Vienne, the Rhône and the Ariège. But perhaps it is possible to understand these names. Let us try, by having recourse to the studies of a geographical scholar, M. Raoul de Félice. Our rivers have received their names from the various races that anciently occupied Gaul: The Iberians, an unknown people, the Ligurians, the Celts. At the moment of the Roman conquest, almost all the streams of France possess a name. So that modern names are very rare. The Iberians were probably Basques, if not in race at least in language. Even if this is contested, that would not prevent us from tracing the word Adour back to the Basque word _iturria_, which means spring, source. It is to the Iberians that we likewise owe names such as the Aude, the Orbieu, the Urugne. Here probably came a people yet unknown, but of Indo-European language, which was perhaps the godfather to many of our rivers. To this people it may be we owe the names Somme, Sèvre, Herault,--names that are derived from various roots signifying water, liquid, source. According to the same theory, Durance, Drône, Drot, Drac might be translated by "the running water," and the same idea would be found in the name Rhône, while the Loire would be "the stream that waters;" the Meurthe, "she who moistens." As to the Garonne, that would be, "the rapid one"; but the matter is still under discussion: the Garonne has not given up its secret, any more than the Gironde. We may note, in passing, that there are in France three other Garonnes, without taking into account a Garon, a Garonnette, and a Garonnelle; there are seven or eight Girondes, of which two are in the environs of Paris, tributaries of the Orge and the Marne. The Oise and the Isdre stand for the same thing, namely, "the rapid one," which seems rather hazardous to me in the case of the Oise. Certain rivers flow in a deep-cut bed; thus they have received a name which would signify something like case, vase or sheath: these are the Couse, the Cousin, the Cusom, the Cousanne, the Couzeau, and the names Couzon.

We now come to the part played by the Ligurians. In their language they called the alder-tree that grows along the banks of so many rivers, _alisos, alsia_ or _alison_. They gave this name to a number of streams; Alzon, Alzou, Alzau, Auzon, Auzonne, Auzonnet, Arzon, Auze, Auzenne, Auzelle, Auzotte, Auzette, Auzigue, Auzolle, Auzone,--all of which would signify the rivers of the alder-trees. There would also be left to be explained the origin of names ending in _enque_, such as Allarenque, Laurenque, Durenque, Virenque, but it is not known what they mean. Finally, one could not deny to the Ligurians the name Ligoure, which seems to be the name of the people itself. The Aude and the Orb probably owe their designation to the Phoenician settlers; the second of these is perhaps Greek. With the Celtic period the etymologies become a trifle less uncertain. The Celtic word for water, _dour_, is clearly found in the Dourbie, the Dourdene and the Dourdèze, the Dourdon, the Dore and the Doire. Another Celtic name for water, _esca_ is seen in the Ouche, the Essonne. They called a river _avar_; hence, the Abron, the Jabron, the Aveyron, the Arveiron, the Auron; hence probably also the Eure, the Auterne, the Authre, the Automne, the Autruche. _Aven_ means river in the present Breton dialect; now, we find rivers called: Avène, Avon, Avègne, Avignon. From _glanos_, meaning brilliant, gleaming, are perhaps derived the Gland, the Glane; from _vernos_, alder-tree, they have like the Ligurians christened many rivers: the Vern, the Vernaison, the Vernazon; from _der_, oak, came the _Dère_. It should be added that all these words came down to us through the Latin form before acquiring their French form. Thus _Bièvre_ and its derivatives Beuvron, Brevenne, Brevonne, derive from the Latin _bibrum_, itself borrowed from a Celtic word meaning beaver. Is it to the Gauls or the Romans that we owe the names Dive, Divette, Divonne? Does this mean here the fairy, or the divine one? It is difficult to ascertain. There were great resemblances between the tongues.

French and its dialects have naturally named a large number of rivers, either by rechristening them or modifying the old names to give them a French meaning. In this class we have the names suggested by the appearance or the qualities of the river:[1] the Blanche, the Claire, the Brune, the Noire, the Brillant, the Hideuse, the Vilaine, the Furieuse, the Rongeant, the Sonnant, the Creuse, the Sensée. At other times the names come from plants,[2] such as Fusain, Orge, Viorne, Liane, Gland, Orne, Oignon, Trèfle, Rouvre, Lys, Aunes, Bruyère, Troëne; names of animals:[3] Oie, Loir, Louvette, Chèvre, Heron, Ourse, Lionne, Autruche; names of every kind:[4] Mère, Cousin, Sueur, Coquille, Oeil, Oeuf, Rognon, Brêche, Vie, Automne, Blaise, Armance, Abîme. Some proudly bear absolute names: le Fleuve (the Stream), la Rivière (the River); it so happens that they are only rivulets, the one in la Manche, the other in the Alps. And finally, a little river that is probably very wise is called la Même (the Same). The majority of these later names I have taken directly from the map, but a good part of my learning I have borrowed from M. de Félice, who has given us a great deal, free from all pedantry, in his book upon _les Noms de nos Rivières_ (The Names of our Rivers.) Is it not pleasant to know that the Seine means "the gushing one?" Those who wish to learn more may consult the source I have indicated. It is with pain that I wrest myself away from the charms of the rivers of France, for

La rivière est la mère de toute la nature.

The river is the mother of all nature.

[Footnote 1: These signify, in the order of occurrence: white, dear, dark, black, gleaming, hideous, ugly, furious, gnawing, tinkling, hollow, sensible.]

[Footnote 2: Prickwood, barley, liburnum, liana, acorn, flowering-ash, onion, clover, common oak, lily, alder-trees, heather, privet.]

[Footnote 3: Goose, dormouse, she-wolf, goat, heron, bear, lioness, ostrich.]

[Footnote 4: Mother, cousin, sweat, shell, eye, egg, kidney, breach, life, autumn, Blase, Armance, abyss.]

THE FALL OF DAYS

There is a fall of days as there is a I fall of leaves. I do not know what wind, blowing from the infinite, shakes the years, and sends falling from them one by one the sere and yellow days. Whither do they go? Whither go the sere and yellow leaves? To the great laboratory, no doubt, where Nature fashions her annual resurrections. They will return to us from this laboratory as green as ever, and everlastingly the same in their unchangeable designs, those of the poplar, which are hearts, the chestnut, which are hands, the aspen, which are tridents, and the willow leaves, which are lances. But what becomes of days when they have fallen, sere and yellow? To what remote, unknown, chimerical worlds are they carried off forever? For they are never seen again. New days come,--the foliage of the years,--unheralded days, unexpected days, surprising days, days that one loves and days that one fears; but the olden days, those which were familiar to us, those that we desire, that we wait for, will never return. The foliage of the year will be so well renovated that we shall no longer be able to recognize it at all.

Yes, they are days. They have a beginning and an end, they have light and shadow, they are born of night and into night withdraw to die. They are days, without a doubt, but not the same. Their smiles are different, and also their frowns. The joys they bring us are not distributed with less niggardliness, but they have neither the same perfume nor the same color. Hope not to find again the smile that enchanted you. It is dead. It will not return to the face you love any more than the day of your birth will return. But may you at least hope to see once more the face you love, as it was. Alas! You will perhaps have the illusion of seeing it thus, but it will not be reality, for the days, as they vanish into the night, carry off with them somewhat of the countenances of men as a remembrance. It may well be that with these tiny bits they fashion brand new faces, yonder in the chimerical world, but that is not at all sure.

No, never the same, never. Slowly or rapidly, an indefatigable motion whirls everything about in a farandola whose ends never can meet. The year passes by: one day more! The day passes by: an hour longer! The hour passes by: only another minute! In vain. But all this will at least come back? I have already told you, No. Why insist? Bow to fate.

One never crosses the same river twice, said the Greek philosopher, and if this be to some a source of bitterness, others will find in it good reason to take heart. The latter are those whose memories are filled chiefly with evil days. Let them, then, be content. Neither will they ever behold the same days. Tears flow and smiles fade to the same rhythm of life, to disappear together in the bottomless abyss.

Nothing returns, nothing begins anew; it is never the same thing, and yet it seems always the same. For, if the days never return, every moment brings forth new beings whose destiny it will be to create for themselves, in the course of their lives, the same illusions that have companioned and at times illuminated ours. The fabric is eternal; eternal, the embroidery. A universe dies when we die; another is born when a new creature comes to earth with a new sensibility. If, then, it is very true that nothing begins all over again, it is very just to say, too, that everything continues. One may fearlessly advance the latter statement or the former, according to whether one considers the individual or the blending of generations. From this second point of view, everything is coexistent; the same cause produces contradictory, yet logical effects. All the colors and their shades are printed at a single impression, to form the wonderful image we call life.

And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute.

It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires. Then what matters that which we call the fall of the days or the fall of the leaves?

Neither the leaves nor the days fall at the same time for all men, and the hour that marks the end of a year is likewise that which marks the birth of another.

It is thus I dream, during these closing days of December, of life which is nothing, since it dies incessantly, and which is all, since it is ceaselessly reborn. It is the drop of water that flows off as soon as it falls, but which is followed by another drop that presses upon it in its course. We are that, nothing but that,--drops of water that are formed, fall, and flow away; and during such brief moments we nevertheless have the time to create a world and live in it. It is the nobility and the mystery of life that it should be of such little account and yet be capable of such great things, for the most humble creature is still very important,--one of the atoms without which the mass would possess neither its proper weight nor form. It has its part in the universal movement; it is one of the elements of the movement's equilibrium and its periodicity.