The impression left on Clerambault’s mind by his last interview with Perrotin, was one of sadness and pity; but on the whole he decided to go again to see him, having by now arrived at a better understanding of his ironical and prudent attitude towards the world. If he had retained but small esteem for Perrotin’s character, on the other hand the great intelligence of the old scholar continued to command his highest admiration; he still saw in him a guide towards the light.
Perrotin was not exactly delighted to see Clerambault again. The other day he had been obliged to commit a little cowardly act; he did not mind that, for he was used to it, but it was under the eyes of an incorruptible witness, and he was too clever not to have retained a disagreeable memory of the incident. He foresaw a discussion, and he hated to discuss with people who had convictions—there is no fun in it, they take everything so seriously—however, he was courteous, weak, good-natured, and unable to refuse when anyone attacked him vigorously. He tried at first to avoid serious questions; but when he saw that Clerambault really needed him, and that perhaps he might save him from some imprudence, he consented, with a sigh, to give up his morning.
Clerambault related to him all that he had done, and the result. He realised that the world around served other gods than his; for he had shared the same faith, and even now was impartial enough to see a certain grandeur and beauty in it. Since these last trials, however, he had also seen its horror and absurdity; he had abandoned it for a new ideal, which would certainly bring him into conflict with the old. With brief and passionate touches, Clerambault explained this new ideal, and called on Perrotin to say if to him it seemed true or false; entreating his friend to lay aside considerations of tact or politeness, to speak clearly and frankly. Struck by Clerambault’s tragic earnestness, Perrotin changed his tone, and answered in the same key.
“It amounts to this, that you think I am wrong?” asked Clerambault, distressed. “I see that I am alone in this, but I cannot help it. Do not try to spare me now, but tell me, am I wrong to think as I do?”
“No, my friend,” replied Perrotin gravely, “you are right.”
“Then you agree that I ought to fight against these murderous mistakes?”
“Ah, that is another matter.”
“Ought I to betray the truth, when it is clear to me?”
“Truth, my poor friend! No, don’t look at me like that, I shall not follow Pilate’s example, and ask: What is Truth? Like you, and longer than you perhaps, I have loved her. But Truth, my dear Sir, is higher than you, than I, than all those that ever have, or ever will inhabit the earth. We may believe that we obey the Great Goddess, but in fact we serve only the di minores, the saints in the side chapels, alternately adored and neglected by the crowd. The one in honour of whom men are now killing and mutilating themselves in a corybantic frenzy, can evidently be no longer yours nor mine. The ideal of the Country is a god, great and cruel, who will leave to the future the image of a sort of bugaboo Cronos, or of his Olympian son whom Christ superseded. Your ideal of humanity is the highest rung of the ladder, the announcement of the new god—who will be dethroned later on by one higher still, who will embrace more of the universe. The ideal and life never cease to evolve, and this continual advance forms the genuine interest of the world to the liberal mind; but if the mind can constantly rise without rest or interruption, in the world of fact progress is made step by step, and a scant few inches are gained in the whole of a lifetime. Humanity limps along, and your mistake, the only one, is that you are two or three days’ journey ahead of it, but—perhaps with good reason—that is one of the mistakes most difficult to forgive. When an ideal, like that of Country, begins to age with the form of society to which it is strongly bound, the slightest attack makes it ferocious, and it will blaze out furiously in its exasperation. The reason is that it has already begun to doubt itself. Do not deceive yourself; these millions of men who are slaughtering each other now in the name of patriotism, have no longer the early enthusiasm of 1792, or 1813, even though there is more noise and ruin today. Many of those who die, and those who send them to their death, feel in their hearts the horrible touch of doubt; but entangled as they are, too weak to escape, or even to imagine a way of salvation, they proclaim their injured faith with a kind of despair, and throw themselves blindly into the abyss. They would like to throw in also those who first raised doubts in them by words or actions. To wish to destroy the dream of those who are dying for its sake, is to wish to kill twice over.”
Clerambault held out his hand to stop him:—“Ah! you have no need to tell me that, and it tortures me. Do you think I am insensible to the pain of these poor souls whose faith I undermine? Respect the beliefs of others; offend not one of these little ones. … My God! what can I do? Help me to get out of this dilemma; shall I see wrong done, let men go to ruin—or risk injuring them, wound their faith, draw hatred upon myself when I try to save them? … Show me the law!”
“Save yourself.”
“But that would be to lose myself, if the price is the life of others, if we do nothing. You and I, no effort would be too great—the ruin of Europe, of the whole world, is imminent.”
Perrotin sat quietly, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands folded over his Buddha-like belly. He twirled his thumbs, looking kindly at Clerambault, shook his head, and replied: “Your generous heart, and your artistic sensibilities urge you too far, my friend, but fortunately the world is not near its end. This is not the first time. And there will be many others. What is happening today is painful, certainly, but not in the least abnormal. War has never kept the earth from turning on its axis, nor prevented the evolution of life; it is even one of the forms of its evolution. Let an old scholar and philosopher oppose his calm inhumanity to your holy Man of Sorrows. In spite of all it may bring you some benefit. This struggle, this crisis which alarms you so much, is no more than a simple case of systole, a cosmic contraction, tumultuous, but regulated, like the folding of the earth crust accompanied by destructive earthquakes. Humanity is tightening. And war is its seismos. Yesterday, in all countries, provinces were at war with each other. Before that, in each province, cities fought together. Now that national unity has been reached, a larger unity develops. It is certainly regrettable that it should take place by violence, but that is the natural method. Of the explosive mixture of conflicting elements in conflict, a new chemical body will be born. Will it be in the East, or in Europe? I cannot tell; but surely what results will have new properties, more valuable than its parts. The end is not yet. The war of which we are now witnesses is magnificent … (I beg your pardon; I mean magnificent to the mind, where suffering does not exist) … Greater, finer conflicts still are preparing. These poor childish peoples who imagine that they can disturb the peace of eternity with their cannon shots! … The whole universe must first pass through the retort. We shall have a war between the two Americas, one between the New World and the Yellow Continent, then the conquerors and the rest of the world. … That is enough to fill up a few centuries. And I may not have seen all, my eyes are not very good. Naturally each of these shocks will lead to social struggles.
“It will all be accomplished in about a dozen centuries. (I am rather inclined to think that it will be more rapid than it seems by comparison with the past, for the movement becomes accelerated as it proceeds.) No doubt we shall arrive at a rather impoverished synthesis, for many constituent elements, some good, some bad, will be destroyed in the process, the one being too delicate to resist the hostile environment, the other injurious and impossible to assimilate. Then we shall have the celebrated United States of the whole world; and this union will be all the more solid, because, as is probable, man will be menaced by a common danger. The canals of Mars, the drying-up or cooling-off of the planet, some mysterious plague, the pendulum of Poe, in short, the vision of an inevitable death overwhelming the human race. … There will be great things to behold! The Genius of the race, stretched to the uttermost, in its last agonies.
“There will be, on the other hand, very little liberty; human multiplicity when near its end will fuse itself into a Unity of Will. Do we not see the beginnings already? Thus, without abrupt mutations, will be effected the reintegration of the complex in the one, of old Empedocles’ Hatred in Love.”
“And what then?”
“After that? A rest, and then it will all begin over again, there can be no doubt. A young cycle. The new Kalpa. The world will turn once more, on the reforged wheel.”
“And what is the answer to the riddle?”
“The Hindus would tell you Shiva. Shiva, who creates and destroys; destroys and creates.”
“What a hideous dream.”
“That is an affair of temperament. Wisdom liberates. To the Hindus, Buddha is the deliverer. As for me, curiosity is a sufficient reward.”
“It would not be enough for me, and I cannot content myself either with the wisdom of a selfish Buddha, who sets himself free by deserting the rest. I know the Hindus as you do, and I love them, but even among them, Buddha has not said the last word of wisdom. Do you remember that Bodhisattva, the Master of Pity, who swore not to become Buddha, never to find freedom in Nirvana, until he had cured all pain, redeemed all crimes, consoled all sorrows?”
Perrotin smiled and patted Clerambault’s hand affectionately as he looked at his troubled face.
“Dear old Bodhisattva,” he said, “what do you want to do? And whom would you save?”
“Oh, I know well enough,” said Clerambault, hanging his head. “I know how small I am, how little I can do, the weakness of my wishes and protestations. Do not think me so vain; but how can I help it, if I feel it is my duty to speak?”
“Your duty is to do what is right and reasonable; not to sacrifice yourself in vain.”
“Do you certainly know what is in vain? Can you tell beforehand which seed will germinate and which will turn out sterile and perish? But you sow seed nevertheless. What progress would ever have been made, if those who bore the germ of it had stopped terrified before the enormous mass of accumulated routine which hung ready to crush them, above their heads.”
“I admit that a scholar is bound to defend the Truth that he has discovered, but is this social question your mission? You are a poet; keep to your dreams, and may they prove a defence to you!”
“Before considering myself as a poet, I consider myself as a man, and every honest man has a mission.”
“A mind like yours is too precious and valuable to be sacrificed, it would be murder.”
“Yes, you are willing to sacrifice people who have little to lose.” He was silent for a moment, and then went on:
“Perrotin, I have often thought that we, men of thought, artists, all of us, we do not live up to our obligations. Not only now, but for a long time, perhaps always. We are custodians of the portion of Truth that is in us, a little light, which we have prudently kept for ourselves. More than once this has troubled me, but I shut my eyes to it then; now they have been unsealed by suffering. We are the privileged ones, and that lays duties upon us which we have not fulfilled; we are afraid of compromising ourselves. There is an aristocracy of the mind, which claims to succeed to that of blood; but it forgets that the privileges of the old order were first purchased with blood. For ages mankind has listened to words of wisdom, but it is rare to see the wise men offer themselves as a sacrifice, though it would do no harm if the world should see some of them stake their lives on their doctrines, as in the heroic days. Sacrifice is the condition of fecundity. To make others believe, you must believe first yourself, and prove it. Men do not see a truth simply because it exists, it must have the breath of life; and this spirit which is ours, we can and ought to give. If not, our thoughts are only amusements of dilettanti—a play, which deserves only a little applause. Men who advance the history of the world make stepping-stones of their own lives. How much higher than all our great men was the Son of the carpenter of Galilee. Humanity knows the difference between them and the Saviour.”
“But did He save it?
“ ‘When Jahveh speaks: “ ’Tis my desire,”
His people work to feed the fire.’ ”
“Your circle of flame is the last terror, and Man exists only to break through, that he may come out of it free.”
“Free?” repeated Perrotin with his quiet smile.
“Yes, free! It is the highest good, but few reach it, although the name is common enough. It is as exceptional as real beauty, or real goodness. By a free man I mean one who can liberate himself from himself, his passions, his blind instincts, those of his surroundings, or of the moment. It is said that he does this in obedience to the voice of reason; but reason in the sense that you give it, is a mirage. It is only another passion, hardened, intellectualised, and therefore fanatical. No, he must put himself out of sight, in order to get a clear view over the clouds of dust raised by the flock on the road of today, to take in the whole horizon, so as to put events in their proper place in the scheme of the universe.”
“Then,” said Perrotin, “he must accommodate himself to the laws of that universe.”
“Not necessarily,” said Clerambault, “he can oppose them with a clear conscience if they are contrary to right and happiness. Liberty consists in that very thing, that a free man is in himself a conscious law of the universe, a counterbalance to the crushing machine, the automaton of Spitteler, the bronze Ananke. I see the universal Being, three parts of him still embedded in the clay, the bark, or the stone, undergoing the implacable laws of the matter in which he is encrusted. His breath and his eyes alone are free; ‘I hope,’ says his look. And his breath declares, ‘I will!’ With the help of these he struggles to release himself. We are the look and the breath, that is what makes a free man.”
“The look is enough for me,” said Perrotin gently.
“And without the breath I should die!” exclaimed Clerambault.