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1
m^:
The Measure
Hours
BY
of the
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Translated by
Copyright, 1905,
By G.
p.
Putnam's Sons
By Maurice Maeterlinck
Copyright, 1905,
1906,
1907,
Note
Of
the essays forming this volume^
^
some
two or three are now published, in English, The remainder have for the first time.
appeared, at different times, in newspapers
Monthly,
Quarterly,
the the
Critic,
the
International
The thanks of
and translator
volume.
223939
Contents
IS
moun-
by the
hours of the
and hoped
us learn to enjoy
them
fully, continuously,
voluptuously.
privi-
Let us
tomed
and made
The Measure
even as
of the Hours
we
common
II
of time
We
Its
are so conconscious
cannot be
made
joys or sorIt,
like
an
substance and
we have
apparent;
It
and, having no existence in Itself, It borrows the taste, the perfume and the shape
It.
For
this
little
by our
watches wear a different aspect from those prolonged by the great hand of the belfry
or cathedral-clock.
It
12
behoves
us,
there-
The Measure
hours.
of the Hours
Even
as
we have
upon
glasses
whose
hock or
heavy port, or the gladness of champagne, why should not our minutes be numbered in
ways appropriate
stance, that our
for in-
and
restlessness,
strictly,
methodi-
cally,
pneumatic dial-plates or our small pocketwatches. Here, majestic time, the master
of gods and men, the immense of eternity,
sect
is
human form
in-
The Measure
during
the
of the Hours
evening
snatched,
too-short
of the Dutch or
to
Norman
clock be allowed
Impressive the
On
indifferent,
but
really
sombre,
for
our
hours of discouragement of self-denial, of sickness and pain, for the dead minutes of
our
life,
let
dejected and
tors.
It Is
of our ancesInactive
to-day no
more than an
symbol on our tombstones or the funeral hangings of our churches, except where, pitifully fallen.
In
It
may
still
be found presiding,
some country
The Measure
it still
of the Hours
scythe,
it
figures, in
on
its
its
antiquated blazon.
its
And
yet
had
In
merits and
human
thought,
in the
around the abode of the dead, the convents that opened their doors and
to the
windows only
sur-*
and
their
ornaments,
measure
filled as
with preIt
It
stifled
in
powdery
particles.
was made for counting one by one the sands of prayer and waiting, of terror and weariness.
in dust, isolated
life
garden and space, secluded in their glass phial even as the monk was secluded in his
cell,
them
The Measure
dumb and
them
to be
of the Hours
away with
added
IV
Between the glorious banks of flaming summer,
they are
it
which
marked by the orb itself that showers them upon our leisure. In these
more open, more lingering days, I and trust only in the great divisions
wider,
believe
me with the
warm shadow
which
reflects
of
its
and records
in silence, as
though
it
By
scription
directs
wishes
of
time
which
hour,
human
The Measure
which
rules our
of the Hours
all
meals and
the
little
actions of our
little lives,
acquires a nobility,
a direct
the dazzling,
motionless
afternoons
and
immaculate summer.
Unfortunately, the sun-dial, which alone
knew how
spotless hours,
is
disappearing from
our gardens.
hardly anywhere to be
court,
found save
main
on the stone
among
its gilt
the quincunxes
castle,
some
where
and
style are
Nevertheless,
some of the
mained
Italian market-towns
have
re-
Here
we
The Measure
of the Hours
of the brightest of old, dilapidated countryhouses, the frescoed circle over which the
their
fairy
And
play in a vast
soul
life,
human
with
incomprehensible
la justice
^'Uheure de
village,
live, which, amid the crumbling rocks and clambering aloes and fig-trees, resembles a miniature Toledo re-
near to where
Another
motto
"I
am moved
in
by the
light."
"Amydst
i8
y^ flovvres, I tell
y* hours," says
an old
The Measure
garden.
surely,
Is
of the Hours
prettiest legends,
'I
"
he adds.
feeling!
"What
How
on the
and time
progress
that
is
marked by what
is
joyous and
all
What
conveyed to the mind to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch
only for the smiles and neglect the frowns
and
from
I"
19
The Measure
of the Hours
The
clock,
or form.
They
enslaved
reveals to
god
Around
we
He who
will see
has learnt to
them turn by turn touching earth and leaning over the mysterious altar to
god whom man honbut cannot know. He will see them
in
ours,
advancing
gar-
The Measure
ments, crowned with
first,
of the Hours
fruit, flowers
or
dew
visi-
dawn
cruel,
noon,
ardent,
resplendent,
almost
Implacable; and,
twilight, slow
finally,
and sumptuous, delayed In their progress towards approaching night by the purpling shadow of the trees.
VI
The
gold.
sun-dial alone
Is
worthy to measure
at
moments
its
bronze voice
as the
and nothing
Is
so
harmonious
sound
dumb
gesture of
Its
amid the
sea of blue.
21
The
sun-dial gives a
The Measure
centre
of the Hours
to scattered
and
nameless joys. All the poetry, all the delights of the country-side, all the mysteries of the firmament, all the confused
thoughts of the
tall trees
to the devourall
the
its
pond
covered with drops of sweat formed by the duck-weed, the satisfaction of the house
that
opens.
In
Its
greedy to draw
In the
The Measure
and take stock of
this
is
of the Hours
around
their continuance
marks
that
it
carries,
performs
stars.
IMMORTALITY
IMMORTALITY
I
the
IN
ing,
new
era
we
is
cross-
that of
Do
all
things
end
at
death?
Is
there
an imaginable
after-life ?
side
we
call
existence ?
At
the
heart
stops
beating,
does
matter triumph,
or
Like
all
that exists,
we
are imperishable.
We
The Measure
be lost
finity, it is
of the Hours
in the universe.
By
can
fall
and be annihilated.
all
is;
All that
is
is
will
be eternally;
that
is
not.
and there
common with
to conceive.
it
strives
We
is
that
it
works
universe, which
is,
after
all,
of the universe.
and follow upon itself is the form and fashion under which we see im;
what
realities these
appearances correspond.
They
is
laid
under
all
blinds
them,
that
Remove
Immortality
bandage what remains ?
:
Do we
enter into
the
beyond?
Or do
exist for
us?
II
That
is
impossiit-
The
the
which
We
our ego.
it
when
de-
we
reflect
upon
the consequences of
is
its
struction, this
ego
neither our
mind nor
we
waves that flow away and are renewed inIs it an immovable point which cessantly.
could not be form or substance, for these
are always in evolution, nor
life,
which
is
29
The Measure
In truth,
It
of the Hours
?
hend or
define
to tell
where
It
dwells.
source,
When we
we
find
try to
go back to
its last
a succession of
memories, a
one
our
instinct
of living
a series of habits of
scious
reactions
against
all
the
Is
surrounding
the most
is
phenomena.
steadfast
When
of
said,
point
that
nebula
our
to
be a somewhat external, a somewhat accessory faculty and, in any case, one of the
frailest faculties
which disappear the most promptly at the least disturbance of our health.
30
Immortality
III
It
matters
not;
that
uncertain,
indisis
cernible, fleeting
so
much
It is a
matter of utter
indifference
to
us
that
throughout eternity our body or its substance should know every joy and every
perfume, beauty,
wise
indifferent
it
is
like-
to
us
it
that
our
intellect
life
of
it.
Our
instinct
not affect
not
31
if
The Measure
eternally living
of the Hours
of
my mind
;
be
and radiant
in the
gladnesses
supreme I do
not
with
They
are
now
as
unknown
Anywithin
me
me
is
only upon
it
know not
I
where and
like a
precisely nowhere,
this
which
turn
mirror about
in so far as
IV
Thus our longing
Itself
while expressing
on
Immortality
parts of our whole life that
interest of
that, if
we
It
base
all
the
our
after-life.
seems to us
drawbacks, of the
from that of
of ignorance in
and
will
may
ensue
no longer concern
us.
"What immortality can one promise to men who almost necessarily conceive it in How can we help it?" asks a this guise?
puerile, but
tality that
profound
instinct.
Any immorit
through
we
during a few years of movement, any immortality that does not bear that indelible
mark of our
were
not.
identity
is
for us as though
religions
it
Most
this
of the
have
understood
The Measure
time destroys the
of the Hours
and
It
at the
Is
same
thus that
own
flesh.
There
lies
When
we demand
almost
infinity
we may
underto
are
we not wishing
Are
dis-
perfumes?
Are we
not,
on the other
In
man who,
It
order
he
is
necessary to
Immortality
continue his sickness In his health and in
the boundless sequence of his days?
The
comparison, for that matter, Is more accuPicrate than Is the habit of comparisons.
ture a blind
deaf.
man who
Is
also paralysed
and
He
his birth
and has
year.
What
in
of
more or
less
hunger and
thirst.
probable that
all
human
our Ideal hopes and dreams of paradise will be reduced for him to the confused sense of well-being that follows
joys, all
This, then,
is
the
The
35
intellect,
having
The Measure of
soundly,
theless, the
life to
the Hours
itself.
knowing nothing of
Never-
poor wretch will have his little which he will cling by bonds as naras
men.
memo-
plunge him into the same despair into which we are plunged by the thought of abandoning a life of glory, light and love for the
icy
Let us now suppose that a miracle suddenly quicken his eyes and ears and reveal
to him, through the
open window
at the
head of
dawn
plain, the
the
murmuring of
wind
its
in the leaves
and
36
Immortality
of
human
voices
among
the morning
hills.
He
rises,
arms
to
him
possesses
name: the
light!
He
in
and
his
upon an ineffable life, upon a sky whereof no dream could have given him a foretaste; and, by
these marvels.
enters
He
a freak which
is
him
to this
inconceivable
and
unintelligible
existence,
wipes out
In
him
all
memory
of days past.
What
will be
which converges
all
that belongs in
its
own
supreme
being.
If
may
venture to coin a
word?
re-
Memory
The Measure
cover within
that
itself a
of the Hours
few traces of the man
force,
was?
new
the
intellect,
awaking and suddenly displaying an unprecedented activity, what relation will that
intellect
whence
it
keep up with the inert, dull germ has sprung? At what corner of
man
identity?
And
inde-
intellect
and
know not what other faculties, that will make him recognise that it is indeed in him
that
the
liberating
it is
miracle
life
has
been
his
wrought, that
neighbour's,
indeed his
and not
transformed,
irrecognisable,
from the
long
silence
itself In
and
reflux of
Have we
yester-
any idea
in
day
Immortality
how
we
It-
Let us
cient
first
preclseness
question
which
comes within the scope of our actual and we are unable to do this,
can
how
we hope
problem
at the
man
moment
of his death?
VI
This sensitive point.
In
problem
one
Is
summed
up, for
is
the only
It is
concerned, immortality
certain
this
mys-
death,
we
we
lose,
strange to say, at
any moment
39
In life with-
Not
only
Is
The Measure
it
of the Hours
in
waking
it
is
at the
mercy of a host of
indislittle
accidents.
A
little
wound, a shock, an
opium, a
literate
it is
it.
to obit,
We
often
need an
selves to recapture
occurring to us.
At
beside
without
touching
us,
without
it
con-
One would
it
we
taste life
and
bring
home
is
but a
and
returns.
What
reassures us
it
is
that
we
intact
on
Immortality
distraction,
fragile
do we
to be, that
it is
bound
from death.
VII
pending others which the future will no doubt reveal, is that in
truth,
One foremost
every elsewhere,
here
it
it
still
loiters
It
earliest ages.
surrounds
with the
dreams and the barbarous longings wherewith It lulled the hopes and fears of cavedwelling man.
It asks for things that are
It
if
obtained, were
more
to be
disasters with
which
Can we
The Measure
of the Hours
And
behold
how,
In all this,
we obey
the Illogical
la folle
whims
du logis!
Which
of
us, if
In the scientific
hundred years as he is to-day, with his body intact, even on condition that he lost all
memory
of his previous
life
would of
^whlch
those
us
same confidence
as
the brief,
gentle
Far from
to
dreading
It,
make
we
men
and Implore
as a favour
deem
life?
And
yet,
during that
sleep,
how
on
would
they
42
find
again
Immortality
awaking ?
What
link, at the
moment when
they closed their eyes, would connect them with the being that was to awake with-
new world?
all
and
their
would depend upon that non-existing link. There is, in fact, between real death and
this sleep
to sleep
the birth
would be of a posthumous
child.
VIII
On
make
with
what answer do we
when
it
has to do not
we
concerned, for
The most
faithful, affectionate
and
intelli-
The Measure
sive carcass,
It
of the Hours
which we hasten to get rid of. does not even seem possible to us to ask
if
ourselves
life
which we loved
him
subsist else-
where
in our memory, or if there be another world for dogs. It would appear rather ridiculous to us that time and space should
all eternity,
among
poor
beast,
made up of
his
kind
Besides,
body,
body has ceased to exist? Yet by what right do we imagine between ourselves and the animal an abyss that does
that
vegetable, the vegetable and the animal?
when
far, so
Immortality
different
from
all
that lives
upon
earth, this
and a kingdom to which the very gods whom we have created would not always
have access these are what we must
:
first
of
all
examine.
IX
It
would be Impossible
paralogisms of our
point which we are
Imagination
discussing.
on the
Thus, we
of time.
Upon
It
reflection,
should
its
to escort us with
Its
Inevitable drawbacks.
ishes
faults.
blemIntend
shall
and
its
absurdities.
is
What we
if It
Is
to take with us
our
soul.
But what
we answer
to one
who
asks us
be pos-
total of
45
The Measure
and moral
faculties,
of the Hours
added,
to all
make
full
measure
to
fall
instinct,
our
?
our
subconsciousness
Now, when,
see these
at the
same
faculties
tress ourselves,
we do
than
we
when
we behold
strength.
We keep
It
intact
seems to us quite natural that the state of one set of faculti'es should
after-life.
an
depend upon the state of the others. Even when the former are completely destroyed
in a
being
that
his
we have
ego, his
him or
however, nothing remains. We should not mourn his loss, we should not think that he
was no more,
if
Immortality
if
we do
body
that
in the
tomb, or
during
life,
what
is it
we
ask death to
dream do
we demand
the realisation?
X
In truth,
we
mo-
Why
be astontable.
It contains
best
known and
the house.
;
a wick, a glass
chimney and
this light
The
when
it
whence
comes when
extinguish
it.
where
it
goes when
Then,
suddenly, around
which
can
lift,
The Measure
of the Hours
have been fashioned by my hands, the riddle becomes unfathomable. Gather round my
table all the
men
I
that live
tell
which
my
pleasure.
them venture upon one of those definitions known as scientific, every word of the definition will multiply the
unknown
and,
on
every side,
less night.
we know
nothing of the
es-
gleam of
all
the elements
were created by ourselves, of which the source, the proximate causes and the effects
are contained within a china bowl,
how
can
we hope
thousands of milintelligence in
lions of leagues
from our
48
Immortality
XI
humanity began to exist, it has not advanced a single step on the road of the
mystery which we are contemplating. No question which we ask ourselves on the subject
Since
touches,
on
my
side,
is
the sphere In
which our
Intelligence
There
perhaps no relation possible or imaginable between the organ that puts the
Is
The most
active
and searching
en-
Learned and conscientious psychical societies, notably in England, have got together
an Imposing collection of Irrefutable facts which prove that the life of the spiritual or
nervous being can continue for a certain time after the death of the material being.
The Measure
as that
of the Hours
as a basis for our firm-
which serves
removes by a few
a person
lines,
But
all this
whom
alive that I
speak
enter
my room
life
minute when
a thousand miles
that
no doubt, very strange, even as everything is strange in a world of which we do not understand the first word but it shows
is,
;
spirit,
the breath,
the nervous
and
it
for an
instant,
we
moment
in
Certainly, the
phenomenon
an astonishing one; but given the nature of that spiritual force, we ought to be much
50
Immortality
more astonished
the fulness of
that
it
is
not produced
in
at
our pleasure,
it
In any case,
question.
throws
a
no
light
upon the
Never has
single
have the
new
life,
of a supraterrestrial
a life different
from that
whence
it
just
emanated.
of
all
On
spiritual life
of them, at that
moment
when
to be pure, since
when enveloped
in a sort
in matter.
Most
of them,
accustomed preoccupations. One looks for its hat, which it has left on a chair or table
;
another
is
anxious to
know
the time.
at the
And
all
of
the
them, a
real
little later,
moment when
I
after-life
The Measure
of the Hours
proves nothing either for or against the do not possibility of the after-Hfe.
We
ghmmers of
a better,
new or
present existence.
want of
makes them
around
to
still
but
fail,
make themselves
.recognised or to give
we
our
efforts
would
fail to
give a
man
blind
least notion of
It
light or colour.
In any case.
Is
certain
new
science of the
It,
"Borderland" as
left the
have
problem
ning of
human
consciousness.
52
Immortality
XII
In the Invincible ignorance, then,
In
which
we
our eternal
destinies.
amine the
different
ex-
are
compelled to admit that the most beautiful are not the least probable. A first hypothesis,
son, as
we have
annihilation.
A second hypothesis,
less
eagerly
more or
integral
preservation,
We have also
Is
little
more
so
first,
but at bottom
naive, and puerile that, narrow, whether for men or for plants and animals,
so
one sees scarcely a means of finding a reasonable place for It In boundless space and
Infinite time.
Let us add
53
that, of all
our
The Measure
possible destinies,
to be really
it
of the Hours
an enlarged and transformed consciousness, of which that which we possess to-day can
give us no Idea, which
it
prevents us rather
from conceiving, even as our Imperfect eye prevents us from conceiving any other light
than that which goes from Infra-red to
ultra-violet,
whereas
it Is
shaped
differently
from
ours.
first
Although double
hypothesis
is
at the
view,
the
To
say,
we
an
after-life
without
consciousness
Is
is
equivalent to annihilation
54
to settle
a priori
Immortality
and without
reflection that
Is
sciousness which
the
chief
obscure of
It
is,
all
have pro-
claimed, the most difficult that exists, considering that the object of our
is
is
What,
to
itself do,
save reflect
and
no purpose?
flection
incapable of emerging
from the
that
is
What
to be
done?
upon There
all
is
the rest.
no other
one's consciousness
it
to
look upon
as
an
intelli-
we must endeavour
an act
by an
act
is
The Measure
of the Hours
XIII
But escape
is
impossible; and
we
return
fatally to prowl around our consciousness based upon our memory, the most precarious of all our faculties. It being evident,
we
we must
life.
we
from us
And
here
we
have, before
life
as
after
mnemonic
ego,
concerning which
to ask ourselves if
it
what
Its
activity
Is
to decide,
by reference
to Itself
From
so
special.
fragile
and
Immortality
no other mode of consciousness, no other means of enjoying life? A nation of men
is
born blind, to return to the comparison which becomes essential, because It best
sums up our
men
whom
a solitary
latter
As
selves,
we
our
among
superior
a thousand other to
sense
that
of
mnemonic
fuller
May
we sometimes
catch
In
any
our terrestrial
and almost suppressed by the rule of life, which centralises all the
Are
57
The Measure
however
of the Hours
however
ruth-
scientifically
Its
we may
allow
thing
absolutely
disinterested
that
takes
Is
It
art,
we
are plunged
beautiful statue,
which we
shall never
desire,
Is it
not
may
be the
through
cranny
If
of
our
mnemonic consciousness?
able to
ness, that
we
are un-
assert
it.
that this
would be
life
All our
would be spent
58
midst of
Immortality
things which
if
imagined, our senses, instead of being given to us all together, had been granted to us one
For that
which awakens only at the approach of puberty, shows us that the discovery of an unexpected world, the displacegeneration,
ment of
all
During
we
excite
"grown-
up people."
we
understanding what manner of fury or madness was thus seizing hold of our
ceed
In
elders
our
feel-
The Measure
ings
of the Hours
Ideas.
We
see,
depends upon so little that we have no right to doubt the possibility of that which
ine
we cannot
conceive.
XIV
What
Is
still
keep us
we tarry In the gloomy prison of our senses. Our Imagination, as we lead it to-day, ac<
commodates
captivity.
Itself
it
too
is
readily
to
that
True,
But
It
does not
the intui-
within
itself
tions
it is
and presentiments which tell it that, kept absurdly captive and that It should
infinite circles
is
dent and
itself.
which
it
pictures to
It
Immortality
should say to
itself,
with ever-increasing
its
most
Never was
entitled, nay,
bound
to be
more madly
it
reckless than
now.
All that
succeeds in
building and multiplying in the most enormous space and time that it is capable of
conceiving
is
as
what
Already the smallest revelations of science in our humble daily life teach it
is.
that,
is
even
in this
modest environment,
reality, that
it is
it
being
zled by
all
lies
hidden
in a stone, a
grain of
It
a plant,
an
insect.
already something
mind
of our
blindness
it
we
can-
The Measure
circle,
of the Hours
beyond
it.
lie
Man,
to
maintain his sense of proportion, has a need to tell himself at every moment that, were;
he suddenly placed amid the realities of the universe, he would be exactly comparable
row pathways,
the
tiny
holes,
its
the
ap-
ant-heap,
floating
on a
Pending
left
time
when we
realities
shall
have
Into
we
stand a
much
lighting
dreams of that imagination, through the midst of eternity, between the dikes of logic and of actual possibilities.
striving to lead the
Let us therefore
try,
whenever
new dream
life.
Immortality
say to ourselves that,
bilities
among
all
the possi-
still
hides from
us,
realise,
one of the
least ambitious
is
and the
disconcerting
of enjoying an existence much more spacious, lofty, perfect, durable and secure
is
offered to us
byour actual
and
consciousness.
therd'are
possibility
the prob-
of knowing what part of our Intellectual and moral acquirements will pass Into our
eternal
and universal
life.
This
;
is
not the
work of to-day
or to-morrow
but
it
would
it
the
day.
.,
;.,
63
WAR
that
Is
Incessantly renewed.
It
most of our
efforts
and
making of
It
re-
propose to-day to look at It from only one point of view, In order once again to
establish the fact that the
No
sooner have
we
perceived In
new glimmer,
new
Its
we
often become
67
The Measure
ahvays
to
Its
of the Hours
though, thinking freed formidIs
slaves.
It Is as
free
ourselves,
we
It
able
enemies.
True
that,
In
the
wherewith we could no longer dispense. But hardly has one of them made Its submission before. In the very act of passing
under the yoke. It places us on the track of an Infinitely more dangerous adversary and
;
glori-
ous and
over,
Moresome
among
adversaries
are
But perhaps
know
how .to
appeal
delay by
many
our Intelligence.
68
The Gods
II
of
War
notably the case with the majority of the Inventions that relate to war.
Is
This
We
have seen
this In recent
monstrous
conflicts.
his-
For the
tory,
first
entirely
new
forces,
mature
at last,
have emerged from the darkness of a long period of experiment and probation and
come
field.
men on
the battlestill
They were
reluctant to asstill
some
The
midable explosive
proportions.
preserved
human
over-
To-day,
we
are
whelmed, we have
definitely abdicated,
69
our
The Measure
reign
is
of the Hours
us, as so
many
mon-
Ill
It is true that the
part played by
man
in
battle
decisive.
Already
ties
of Olympus mingled with mortals on the plains of Troy and, wrapped in their silvery cloud, which rendered them invisible without
tected,
warriors.
had
a limited
inter-
power and
vention,
flected
a limited mystery.
Their
Their
of
narrow
orbit
our
own
secrets.
The
heaven
Issued
70
The Gods
of
War
our conception; their passions, their sorrows, their thoughts were but little juster,
loftier or
man
more
scure.
distant; mightier,
With
his
domain and,
;
as he organised
and extended
group of undecipherable laws which we term chance, or hazard, or destiny. Consider, for Instance, the
admirable picture, so
palpably true to
life,
Emand
The
two
chiefs,
71
Kutusoff
The Measure
of the Hours
Napoleon, are so far away from the scene that they perceive only the most insignificant details; they
what
is
happening.
good
*'the
he
is, is
aware of
force of circumstance.*'
a hovel,
Sprawling outside
on a bench over which a carpet has been spread, the unwieldy, one-eyed Russian drowsily awaits the result, giving
no
"No"
to the
Napoleon, on
is
He
from
But he
clings
none the
less to
issuing orders,
late
Is
And
on
the
traced for
It,
its
men
banks.
IV
And yet Napoleon, of all the generals of our later wars, remains the only one who preserved the semblance of human direction.
The
and
were
still In
their cradle.
Would
he be able to
73
The Measure of
the Hours
gods are other that press on our ranks, break our lines and scatter our squadrons, sink our
ships
fortresses.
These gods
issue
from primitive chaos, far beyond the home of their predecessors; and all their laws,
their power, their intentions
outside
the
circle
of
our
world that
is
And
it
is
to this blind
known, which has nothing in common with us, which obeys impulses and commands as
incomprehensible as those which govern the
most fabulously
impenetrable,
distant stars;
it
is
to this
irresistible
energy that
we
is
what
life
which we are
;
it is
to these
we
entrust the
The Gods
of
War
from the un-
just
V
What
are the powers to which
we have
I
man whose
Is
eyes should
floating
around
as the
upon
thier brow.
Suppose such a
man
sphere which
we
Inhabit
and which to
face,
us reflects only
gestures
our
own
our
own
Imagine
to attain
we were
The Measure
Invisible which,
fells
of the Hours
side, confines us,
on every
us and
lifts us,
awful,
the inconceivable
space,
images
that,
in
must inevitably be borne by the phenomena and laws of nature whereof we are the frail playthings. Nor
some hollow of
dream
tell
it is
now
that
we dream, when we
forget so readily
when we
ence
we are now dreaming the puny dream of human illusion, w^hereas then we should
enter the eternal truth of the life without
limit in
life is
bathed.
:
The
its
spectacle
at the roots of
nothingness.
among
the
many
illusory
The Gods
two
fleets
of
War
few
helpless,
brought into
;
flatter
themselves that
they have enslaved and turned to their purpose, to serve an idea entirely foreign to the
universe, the
most dangerous of
laws.
Try
to provide
nomy
its
power and
And, if you fear to let your mind dwell on what is impossible and unimaginable, leave out of count
!
functions
among
which the ships obey as well as the sea that bears them and the earth that bears the sea
and the planets that support the earth. You would have to seek so far, in such solitudes.
In
such
infinities,
beyond such
it
The Measure
dream would pause
whole universe
of the Hours
nor the
in helplessness,
suffice to
lend a mask.
VI
Let
us, therefore,
which are
more
limited,
there be any
any that are near. Let us take only the laws which these ships
to us, if there be
in their
achievement.
gigantic
What
shadow
shall
we
attribute, to take
ex-
which have
of war,
all
With what
?
we
connect them
Melinite,
roburite,
and
The Gods
lyddite
spectres,
of
War
ye Indescribable
and
balllstite,
by whose
pow-
even the mighty thunderbolt, once held the most awful symbol of divine anger, become mere gossipy, good-natured old women, a
little
ready to
strike,
Inoffensive, almost
less
who com-
poses your slumber, even as the engineer or artilleryman who awakens you. Is In total
your Incredible bound and the eternal laws which you so suddenly
soul, the springs of
obey!
Are you
you the gleaming transfiguration of death, the awful gladness of the palpitating void
Are you
new form of
79
life
and so ardent
The Measure
of twenty centuries?
of the Hours
Are you
a flame
from
it
the reserve
Do you,
towards
bound of yours
new
twinkling of an eye,
all
Are you soul or matter or a third state still unknown to life? Whence do you derive
your destructive passion, where do you
the lever that splits a
continent,
rest
whence
zone of the
stars
whereon the
earth,
your
To
who
all
man
of science
creates
force "is
you will reply gravely that your due to the sudden production of a
beneath the atmospheric pres80
The Gods
sure."
of
War
Is
All
is
now
explained, all
clear.
;
depths of truth
exactly
know
how
8x
LET
for those
who
possess there
is
is
only one
certain duty,
which
to strip themselves of
so as to bring themselves
nothing.
duty exists
but, at the
admitted that
Is
Impossible of accomplishment.
For the
most ardent periods, even at the beginning of Christianity and in the maat the jority of the religious orders that
made
Is
perhaps the
The Measure
fulfilled.
of the Hours
us,
It
behoves
therefore,
when
considering our subsidiary duties, to remember that the essential one has been knowingly evaded.
Let
this truth
govern
us.
Let us not forget that we are speaking in its shadow and that our boldest, our utmost
steps will never lead us to the point at
which
we ought
to
first.
II
Since
It
appears that
we have
here to do
with an absolute impossibility before which it were idle to make any further display of
astonishment,
let
us accept
human
nature as
we
find
it.
Let
seeing that
it
we have
Is
that which, in the absence of this strength, able to nourish our conscience.
There
Our
What are we
society ?
cally,
Social
Duty
of our
do
join the
those
who
are struggling
Is
it
to maintain
economy?
wiser not
withal to satisfy
reproaches.
this choice
Its
Is
not
more simply than after our usual fashion and rather In the manner of the unbiased
denizen of some neighbouring planet.
87
The Measure
of the Hours
III
all
the
traditional
seriously defended.
This
is
true;
but the
human
laws of nature.
imperilled
if it
Its
abandoned
intention to
It
is
with
its
particular nature to
its
animal
this ob-
Moreover,
among
those
whose
principle
is
We
it is
right, in
order
Our
best
Social
Duty
the most
effi-
among
and
Here
is
and only
the question of
opportuneness remains.
it
We
be well under-
duty being
it is
and bloodshed,
indis-
it
temper It while the mass IS being enlightened and borne gradually and ^without serious upheavals towards a
important to
liberty
this
and
instincts.
true
nevertheless,
it
would be
we
The Measure of
whether the
evils
the Hours
were
advantage
in acting
with
all
speed whether,
;
when
all is told,
who
now
of to-
day would have to undergo for the space of some weeks or months. We are too ready
to forget that the
less noisy, less
most
terrible revolutions.
IV
and perhaps
a century
more than
been passing through the most fruitful and victorious, probably the climacteric years of
go
Our
its
Social Duty-
destiny.
It seems, If
we
consider
its
Its
past,
evolution.
One would
that
It
Is It
think,
from
certain indications,
Its
Is
apogee.
historically to be
com-
trifle,
which
shall connect or
emphasise the
dis-
it,
perhaps, from
of the great
universe,
sacriIt
unknown phenomenon of
the
would probably render useless all the fices which justice demands of men. Is
dangerous to stop
not
precious, precarious
Admitting even that what Is gained can no longer be lost, as In the earlier upheavals,
It Is
The Measure
of the Hours
put an abrupt end to this happy period; and It Is not sure but that Its reappearance
This
Is,
as I
have
said,
disquieting
argument.
It
But there
Is
no
doubt that
tance
to
a
of humanity.
happen when
which
the
thousand
favourable to
92
Our
its
Social
is,
Duty
at this
activity.
There
moment, a
Idle-
many mental
anni-
energies as excess of
hilates below.
it
manual labour
It is incontestable that,
when
men
to apply them-
will in-
thousandfold
its
prospects
of
Here,
I think,
we have
pro and the contra, the most reasonable reasons that can be invoked by those who
are in no hurry to end the matter.
In the
monolith of
to let
it
injustice.
itself.
There
is
no need
defend
limits
It oppresses con-
sciences,
intelligences.
Wherefore
all
that
is
it is
asked of those
who would
have
been
overthrow
that,
when
its
surroundings
93
The Measure of
cleared,
its fall
the Hours
fewer
disasters.
may
entail
Are we
And
which
among
VI
Do
appear to you
They
are pre-
carious enough; but, even so, it would not be fair to condemn them without consider-
than that of pure reason. This point must always be sought as soon as we have to do
with questions that go beyond human exIt might easily be maintained, perience.
for instance, that the choice
would not be
of
all.
The
race,
which probably
its
has an
infinite consciousness
destinies
among men
the
Our
parts that suit
its
Social
Duty
drama of
them
in the lofty
evolution.
always understand, it is doubtless necessary that the race should progress slowly: that is why the enormous mass of its body attaches
it
to the past
very upright intelligences may be comprised within this mass, even as it is possible for
greatly inferior minds to escape
from
it.
Whether
little; it is
often a quesdistribu-
of predestination
and the
However
this
may
whose reason
ments of the
past,
it
would be a fresh
Let us admit,
in
very plausible force. The fact, therefore, that to-day does not satisfy us is
enough to make
It
The Measure
ports
it,
of the Hours
arrival
order to
It
is
order that
we should
loyally
we should
take no
we
it
represent the
like the inert
oxygen:
azote,
if
we behave
in
we
the scale
is
us,
the
account of
would be
to
add
to that part
in
discordant words
the
Humanity
on the horizon.
It
Our
which
It
Social
Duty
It
distributes
forces as
It
thinks right.
At
us,
ten thousand
men
to
let
us
We
this
of former days be Insufficiently defended. are only too naturally inclined to tem-
porise, to
is
The
add
to the
Immense
deadweight which nature drags along. But let the others follow blindly the inmost
Impulse of the power that urges them on.
Even
If their
them
act
reason; for In
call
all things,
because of the
of the earth,
The Measure of
VII
Let us not fear
lest
the Hours
we be drawn
however
just,
too far ;
and
let
no
reflection,
break or
Our
of
life.
There
us
whose
exclusive
it
duty, whose most precise mission extinguish the fires which we kindle.
Is
to
Let us
our
limits of
justice.
Let
at the
very summit of themselves. Their presence on these intermediary tops will fill with
living substance the dangerous intervals be-
tween the
first
Our
Social
Duty
in-
our
human
destinies
upon
last.
eternity.
and her
bal-
The
may
is
pitch or roll
on
in-
no reason for
to
moulder
by
Ballast exists everywhere: all the pebbles of the harbour, all the sand on the beach
will serve for
it.
But
sails
not in the
light of the
murk of
tall
amid the
of space.
VIII
Let us not say to ourselves that the best
truth
always
lies
in
moderation,
in
the
decent average.
The Measure of
If
the
Hours
the majority of
a
hope upon
ful.
men did not think, did not much lower plane than is need-
That
is
why
it
seems reasonable.
The
moderation of to-day will be the least human of things to-morrow. At the time of the
Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the just medium was certainly
that people ought not to burn too large a
number of
heretics; extreme
demanded
all.
It
is
the same
and so
on.
enough
to realise that
that
is
summit of thought, that is right? At the present moment, the most reasonable opinion on the subject of our social question
invites us to
do
all
that
100
we can
gradually
Our
Soda].
Duty
and
dis-
more
of
equitably.
Extreme
suppression
property,
obligatory
rest.
We
how
Is
these
demands
make them
ap-
of the nobility.
It
is
important, in these
and
we
Anything that
in
it
confirms or
circle.
moves
an insignificant
The
our
much
less in
always turned towards the past, than In our Imagination, which sees
reason,
which
is
lOI
'
''
'
-If
'
IX
Let us reason, then, strive to soar above experience. This Is easy for young people but It Is salutary that ripe age and old age
;
We
should
guard beforehand, as the years pass, against the dangers which our confidence in the race
must run because of the great number of malignant men whom we have encountered
in
it.
spite of all, to
as
Ideal
Is
which we behold.
viduals no
The
failings of indi-
more Impair
when
seen
from
profound
102
Our
Social
Duty
X
Let us
listen
urges us on;
it is
Let us
do
is
This
men
and that
Is
why
this
Here
above
all
important to destroy.
In every
diffi-
work
Is
We
force
The
of things and of
rebuilding.
struct;
It
is
life
The Measure
to aid
it
of the Hours
Let
us,
powers even to excess nine-tenths of the violence of our blows is lost amid
:
of the heaviest
large stone
hammer
is
dispersed in a
and becomes, so
to speak, imper-
hand.
XI And
fast.
let
If, at certain
lays
and
make up
centuries of inactivity.
The
evolution of
and
it is
ascent at the
moment
cer-
Our
Social
Duty
even
is
It
the
of the
it is its
race
that
decides
these
if
matters,
this instinct
it is
for there
is
nothing
its
above
error.
it
105
precedented
tion
history.
of mankind
and
large
por-
which corresponds with the part that has hitherto created the events of which we
certainty
is it
gradually
has lived
For
thing.
a religion to
It
become
extinct
is
no new
now, men passed from a crumbling temple into one that was building; they
109
The Measure of
left
the Hours
we
That
un-
II
It
is
religions
ity
and
extending beyond
upon men's happiness, although we have and very important ones, such seen some
as
paganism
We
of our
promises nor
called.
ises
first
so
prom-
own
whereas we
erected by
are
living in the
monuments
But we
of the supports
no
Thus we
more
or
less
premature, be-
cause
we
feel
it
to be indispensable,
made
up of remnants gathered from the past, of conclusions borrowed from ordinary good
sense, of a
by
a circuitous
to old-time virtues
is
may be
inter-
first
reflexes of that
elaboration.
at
to be striking
which many
by
and noble
The Measure
dupes. that
still
of the Hours
They wish
attach
to
know
if
the motives
them
not
merely sentimental,
traditional
and
and they seek somewhat vainly within themselves for the supports which
illusionary;
reason
may
Ill
artificial
heaven
which those
who remain
faithful to the
shelter,
we
find
human-
doctrines.
these
two
crossed the
their
fields
of
human
morality.
But
bed
as
was never
now.
so clearly, so rigidly
in
dug out
That which
more than altruism and egoism instinctive and vague, with waves that often mingled,
112
At
their sources,
which are not renewed, but shifted, stand two men of genius Tolstoi and Nietzsche.
:
it is
The
Is
real
conscience
they
mark
little
illusive goals,
which nobody dreams of attaining. One of these doctrines flows violently back towards
a past that never existed In the shape in
which that doctrine pictures It; the other ripples cruelly towards a future which there
is
nothing to
foretell.
on
In this reality,
whereof each of us
it
carries the
Image within
behoves us to study the formahimself, tion of the morality on which our latter-day
"3
The Measure
life rests.
of the Hours
that,
Need
add
man?
IV
Our
morality
is
formed
in
our conscious
from
this
may
the
which we
little
will call
A
is
what might be
at the top, as
called
"good
the
sense." Lastly,
severely
claims
of
all
the
that
name of "mystic
reason."
It is
the morality of
"common
which
sense,'*
of that of us,
good common
in the best
sense
exists in all
alike,
and
morality of
man
joyment.
He who
:
starts
from common
own
life.
In that
life,
going
to the
and poverty; and but two genuine and irreducible boons: health and
evils: sickness
riches.
All other
realities,
The Measure
of the Hours
sorrows born of the feelings and the passions Is Imaginary, because it depends
ft.
Our
of our peaceful enjoyment. With the reservation of these laws, we admit no con-
and our conscience, so far from trammelling the movements of our selfishstraint;
ness,
are
what
Is
most
in
in-
stinctive
and
stratum, the
It
is
first
a state
ii6
"good
a
sense,"
which
is
a
it
little less
material,
looks at
things
from
standpoint
farther.
It
common
Is
sense
life
and wretched
observes that
man
no more
and that
the
in
life
his fellows,
order to expand freely and completely, cannot be reduced to an unjust and pitiless
struggle or to a
mere exchange of
In
its
services
grudgingly rewarded.
wards
others,
it
still
makes
starting-point;
but this
selfishness
no
It still considers
Its
spiritual or
sentimental side.
rows, affections
knows
the
joys
and
sor-
and
of which
may
exist
imagination.
"7
The Measure
of the Hours
rising to
without
losing sight of
its
It
every objection.
in solid
It
within the
domain,
mean
It
feelings
and
all
surround them.
concessions, for,
if
not, the
Itself
which
it
would shut
mon
sense leads
its
stupefied existence.
unlawfulness of
its
claims to busy
Itself
with morality once that the latter has gone beyond the ordinary practices of dally life.
ii8
common
two
be-
stoical idea of
They
it
inhabit
dif-
ferent
Good
when
mulgate the laws that form the inner man, ought to meet with the same resistance and
the same obstacles as those against which
strikes In
It
it
the region of
Here
it Is
on
all
ordered to hold
its
achievement and the supreme and mysterious beauty of the work come Into question.
But, whereas in aesthetics
easily
It
resigns Itself
enough
to
silence,
In
morality
It
It
all things.
were well,
all into
It
The Measure
its
of the Hours
faculties that
One
Is
the
ever-Increasing and almost exclusive confidence which we place In those parts of our
intelligence .which
we have
good
just described as
It
common
always
sense and
sense.
was not
and
rest
thus.
Formerly,
man
based upon
good
sense only a
somewhat
restricted
life.
The
had
Its
mind, notably
ions,
The religthe
for
instance,
up
at a
tion
is
Is
This was excessive; but the queswhether the present contrary excess
not as blind.
The enormous
of our
120
life
strides
made
in the practice
by certain me-
make
us allow to
good
sense
sense a preponderance to
which
it
same good
entitled.
The
apparently incontest-
acquainted makes us
Nothing
human
if
logic.
It
would even be
for the
surpris-
ing
this
were so;
laws
of
insignificant
when we compare
"There
is
with what
effect
we do not know.
no
sense,
of our material
all-sufficing.
life,
undeniable
and
But,
soon as
circle,
we emerge from
this infinitesimal
and
The Measure
effect
of the Hours
in
are
all Is
alike
unknowable
a
life,
world
where
the
unknown.
it
Now
our
from
is
moment when
and experimental circle and, consequently, from the domain of good sense. Even in
the visible world which serves
in
it
for a
model
it
reigns undivided.
Around
us, in
her most
What
What more
un-
What more
illog-
cation of her
means
(as,
for instance, in
What madder
122
than
work?
shows
it
that
it
is
general
life
and that
almost isolated
it
in
the universe.
itself
it
Needs must
argue against
in
and recognise that we shall not give our life, which is not isolated, the
it
aspires.
it
This
we
will
it
abandon
is
where
well to
know
as
that
good
Even
goes beyond
it,
It is in its
work
at
but
it
becoming the master of the great cities and the sovereign of the mountains and the
seas.
occupy infinitely more space within us than the little village of our prac-
mountains
123
The Measure
tical existence,
of the Hours
Is
which
ment upon
sometimes
truths
a small
number of
but
doubtful,
indispensable
It
Is
bond
We must remember
made
which good sense has received the unreasonable, but fertile hypotheses of the Imagination.
Amid
the
moving and
let
eternal
us not,
though to the one rock of salvation. Bound to that rock. Immovable through every age
and every civilisation, we should do nothing of that which we ought to do, become nothing of that which
IX
Until the present time, this question of a
morality limited by good sense possessed no
124
velopment of certain aspirations, of certain forces that have always been considered the
finest
and noblest
to be
found
In
man.
The
work.
Its
limita-
the morality of
like to
would
disinterested. In order to
it
and
it is
aspirations.
But there
out denying
at
its
Itself,
without destroying
which
to us ?
125
The Measure
of the Hours
We
it
be possible to
answer
that there
never can be a
good
sense, this
Is
humanity.
sarily a
Man
is
so essentially, so necesthat,
moral being
all
when he
denies
the existence of
nial already
new
morality.
Mankind,
It
at a pinch, can
little
do
without a guide.
proceeds a
more
It carries
is
the light
whose flame
blown
and
fro,
storms.
It
so to speak, independent of
It.
Moreover,
It
Is
Interesting
and easy
to
have
The
has
is
the spiritual
its
wave which
carries us,
which
we know
More
important than
it,
is
intelli-
gence at a given
religion
moment
in history.
If a
proving,
certainty,
self-sacrifice,
would bring
ward,
I
good and
which we
change.
live
ample?
The Measure
moments when
truded
itself
of the Hours
was absolute and ob-
faith
punishments threatening evil were, in the thoughts of the men of that time, as tangible, so to speak, as
we do
few saints sacrificed goodness was raised. themselves for their brothers, carried certain virtues, selected
bulk of
men
lie,
other, to
The
mean of
to-day.
the vices
On
parably harsher, more cruel and more unjust, because the low-water mark of the
general intelligence was
less
high.
128
which we
have called the morality of common sense and good sense. It is certain that, beside
the latter, there has always been, there
is
still
all
that extends
from the
good
sense,
which are
necessary to our material and spiritual happiness, to the infinity of heroism, of selfsacrifice,
may go
some
nobility, in disinterestedall,
in I
know
not what
it
into
tery of
life.
If
it
be probable, as
we have
hinted, that
129
The Measure
of the Hours
our good sense answers only to an infinitesimal portion of the phenomena, the truths
and the laws of nature, if it isolate us somewhat piteously in this v/orld, we have within
us other faculties which are marvellously
adapted to the unknown parts of the universe and which seem to have been given to
us expressly to prepare us,
if
not to under-
undergo their great presentiments. These are Imagination and the mystic summit of
our reason.
Do
have never been, we are not yet a sort of purely logical animal. There is in us, above
the reasoning portion of our reason, a whole
preparing for the surprises of the future, which is awaiting the events of
ent,
which
is
the unknown.
intelligence,
which
we knew nothing of
130
the laws of
and made us
morally,
socially
and
ent time,
hundred years that have just elapsed, we have unravelled more chaos than in a thousand previous centuries, at the
present time,
and when.
life
seems
and assured,
faculties
this a
reason
why
these
two
why
they
Are
their
traditional lead ?
lose confidence In
right that
Is
It
we should
them?
possible to
human
progress?
ceived us
their fruitful
The Measure
errors,
of the Hours
to
by forcing us
us, In
have revealed to
good
sense
would
discoveries, In biology.
almost
had
good
as
It Is
narrow methods.
It
would never
have foreseen.
XII
In the exact sciences. In which
If
it
seems as
they ought to be
first
dethroned, imagina-
and mystic reason (that is to say that part of our reason which extends above good sense, draws no conclusions and plays
tion
In the hesita,
and
possibilities
of the unknown)
our
Imagination, I
Our Anxious
MoralityIn
they
reign
almost
undivided.
Why
an intermediary
There
is
no concealing the
fact: if
they cease to
sense. If
come
to the assistance of
its
good
work,
summit of our morality falls in abruptly. Starting from a certain line which
the whole
is
good
is
the
mystic reason.
The
ideal
good
man
of our imagina-
The
latter
is
infinitely higher,
more
generous, nobler,
more
disinterested,
more
The Measure
tlon
of the Hours
It
is
and of
essential sacrifices.
a ques-
tion of
knowing which of the two Is right or wrong, which has the right of surviving.
Or, rather,
It
Is
question of
knowing
fact permit us to
make
demand and
XIII
Where
shall
all
we
find
this
new
fact?
Among
Instance?
Does the
that
the least
suspicion
man
will
have
of
human
good-will
tells
Is
a false
it is
What
discovery
us that
134
time to destroy
our conscience
is
all
that goes
beyond
strict
justice, that
to say those
unnamed
virtues
life,
appear to be weaknesses
simple decent
told,
and a host
fume of great
those virtues
in
would
world
wherein the struggle for life was no longer so necessary as it is now on a planet on
species
is
not yet
those
who
them
as against those
who
They oppose an
and
this
excellent, but
more
restricted ideal
is
necessarily
vanquished beforehand.
135
The Measure
The
all,
of the Hours
First of
objection
is
a specious one.
of the struggle
for
new
morality,
It
at
of words.
ideal.
The
its
struggle for
planet
consequences was
riddles solved
its
on
when men
had
with
taken cognizance of
by adorning
it
change,
perhaps,
before
fifty
Next,
it
behoves us to
admit
that,
if
arm
very conthe
over-
combats.
Certainly,
man will be
deceived by him
who
too-devoted
man
is
will suffer
at the
less so;
man?
He
will
some material advantage by It; would lose much more by leaving uncultivated
all
but he
en-
enriches
intelli-
gence; and
human
last
word.
XIV
Moreover,
if
ceed In emerging from the chaos of halfdiscoveries, of half-truths that beguile the
these
The Measure
destinies?
of the Hours
all times,
And
savage
and the
most refined
propor-
man
alike,
preserves a
tional
a higher sphere,
a
rule
infinitely
the
man,
as
more
generous, more loyal, more true to his word than the interest and experience of
his
wretched
life
advise?
Is
it
not thanks
live in
we
an
environment
in
preponderance of
goodness
more and more supreme which the public conscience, which is the perceptible and general form of that
and
and
justice reigns
in
ideal,
and
certain of itself?
138
XV
It
IS
fitting that
we should come
all,
to an
on the rights of
our
instincts.
We
contested.
We
know how
and to
Why
should not
quite
as
more elevated
instincts,
bottom of our
?
same
pre-
Must they be denied, suspected rogatives or treated as illusions because they are not
related to the
sities
is it
two or three primitive necesof animal life ? Once that they exist,
destiny
concerning which
we do
not
know what is useful or useless to it, seeing that we do not know its objects? And is it
not, then, the duty of our
139
good
sense, their
The Measure
them and,
?
of the Hours
certain parts of
our
are beyond
its
sphere
XVI
It
is
all,
to
strive
to
which we belong and, by preference, those which distinguish us the most from all the
other phenomena of the
life
around
us.
Among
these
characteristics,
is,
one of the
most notorious
Intelligence as
our Intelligence; but another has always gone before It, has always appeared Inde-
pendent of
In
it,
It
has
sought
no matter
where, but especially In the religions the explanation of a mysterious Instinct that
140
to
religions
and
to suppress with
organs of our judgment. Besides, all things hang together and help one another, even
those
and
aspirations.
Our
Intelligence
sacri-
from the
which
it
makes
to our imagination
when
of
life.
Our
to believe that
It
itself.
needs
all
our forces,
all
our feelings,
all
our unconsciousness,
all
all
and
that
is
against
it,
in
order to spread
141
The Measure
and
flourish
Is
of the Hours
But the nutriment
It
In
life.
which
necessary to
is
These
truly are
is
to the
lilies,
dew of
It
the
morning
to the roses.
It is
well that
should
know how
to stoop
and pass In silence before certain desires and certain dreams of that heart which it does
not always understand, but which contains
a light that
it
sought
in vain at
its
thoughts.
XVII
We
and
It
are an
is
Indivisible
spiritual
whole;
or written
word
that
we
are able,
when we
from the passions and sentiments of our heart. Every man Is more or
intelligence
142
Our Anxious
less the victim
Morality-
He
more
clearly
when he
is
older.
He
even the
most generous of them, obscure and disturb his thought; and he asks himself, with I know not what hope, how far that
thought will go when
his
it
lulled
dreams and
And
old
age comes: the Intelligence is clear, but has no object remaining. It has nothing
left to do,
Is It
works
In
In the void.
And
It
thus that.
the
most
the
visible,
we observe
old age
is
that.
In general,
work of
mature age, which, nevertheless, has much less experience and knows many fewer
things, but
stifled
the
mysterious
gence.
foreign to
our
intelli-
143
The Measure
of the Hours
XVIII
If
we be now asked
which,
when
all
is
we
It
presupposes a state of
code of
consti-
What
essence
Is
wish to form within ourselves a powerful Idea of justice and of love that always rises
above that formed by the clearest and most generous portions of our Intelligence. One
could mention a thousand examples
take one only, that which
all
Is
:
I will
at the centre of
all
the
rest
when we
and asks us
bluntly,
Our Anxious
Yes,
all
Morality-
who possess more than the others, we who are more or less rich as against those who are quite poor, we all live
of us
in the
which
strength, because
Is
injustice,
but explains
excuses
It
it
and
de-
clares
It
It
to be Inevitable.
shows us that
it
is
Impossible to apply to
efficacious
the swift
and
remedy which our equity seeks; that any too radical remedy would carry with it evils more cruel and more
desperate than those which
cure;
It it
pretended to
that this
In con-
proves to
is
us,
In short,
injustice
organic, essential
all
and
formity with
reason
Is
Our much
Is
more
deeply,
much more
surely right
our
ideal of justice,
reason
acting.
is
It
wrong.
Is
Even when
if
It
Is
not
well,
145
The Measure of
have a quick sense of
the Hours
not because
it Is
less
noble
re-
or
less sure
ligions,
but because
promises no other
just those
which hitherto only a few heroes have understood and which the great presentiments that hover beyond our intelligence
are seeking to
make
us understand.
XIX
In reality,
we need
so few precepts
or
Perhaps three or four, at the utmost six, which a child could give us.
all,
five
We
must, before
understand," as
we
take
it,
is
hardly, as
and
all
for
man
of even a very
mean
Intelligence
that
ness.
There are
as
as
many
stages In the
manners of understand-
If I prove, for
to an Intelligent vain
Is
man how
childish
his vanity, to
of comprehension
hateful
Is
how
his
egoism,
what
have
There
is,
therefore,
;
no doubt that
It is
but
very nearly
act
as
though not so
much
as the
extremity of
one of the truths which they have just admitted had grazed their brain. Whereas,
in
the
same words,
will
bottom of
147
The Measure
of the Hours
every
of his
activity.
He
sense of the
word
"to understand,"
that
Is
we
cannot
flatter ourselves
It
we have
Impossible
with
it.
XX
To
of
return to and resume the central Idea
us recognise that
it is
neces-
what we have
called
good
sense
and the
life.
much
in
Inclined
to
shatter
this
equilibrium
Certainly,
trol
favour
of
good
all
sense.
good
more
strictly
It,
than ever
all
that other
forces bring to
practical conclusions of
148
reasoning; but
Our Anxious
it
Morality-
It
has acquired the certainty that they are deceiving it; and it owes to itself, to the
respect of
its
own laws
asserting
Now, though
may have
acquired the conviction that those forces have committed a mistake In ascribing to a
divine
and
precise will
majority
of
the
phenomena manifested
it
its
from
Instance,
sterile
and dangerous virtues, It could never deny that these same phenomena subsist, whether they emanate from a superior inof the species, Infinitely more powerful within us than the life of the
stinct,
life
from the
individual,
orirom any
it
other unintelligible
source.
In any case,
;
as Illusions
we might
ask
The Measure of
the Hours
itself
it
more
aspires
to destroy.
XXI
For
all
that touches
life,
we
still
illusions:
good
sense
that
spirit, is
Wherelet
fore, taking
one
illusion
with another,
us
from below.
The
former, after
all,
have
are;
we
starting-
we owe them
latter illusions,
a certain gratitude.
The
that
is
to say of
good
150
sense,
have given
when
They
they say,
to
regular,
Be
so
piness.
But
it,
let
that, to
attain
like a
it is
dangerous cargo,
formed the
able,
Leave us
few fancy
virtues.
Allow
a little
It is
very possible that these virtues and sentiments, which are not strictly indispensable
to the just
all
man
when man
shall
have
the
a
accomplished
the
hardest
Also,
stage
of
we must keep
The Measure
useless;
of the Hours
exercise
and nourishment.
off a
Already we
constraints
at
have thrown
number of
We We
tion,
up the activity of our Inner life. are no longer chaste, since we have
work of
Is
no longer go out
In
In search
of resigna;
of mortification, of sacrifice
heart or poor In
we
are no
longer lowly
this
Is
spirit.
All
retiring;
Is
remain empty.
Our
Ideal
no longer asks
to
even
though It take another road, the spiritual road that animated the saints must remain
Intact
and
Is still
necessary to the
man who
It
justice.
beyond
that
simple
justice
that
In
the
who hope
the
we must
delight
acclimatise ourselves
and learn to
persuade
not been
It Is still reasonable to
we have
duped.
XXII
The
good-will of
men
Is
admirable.
They
all
abandon
dreams and
even as
all their
many
hopes
They
one another without an object, a mission, an horizon, a future. If such be the certain
will of life.
pride of our
time in this acceptation and In this adBut, before reaching this stage,
it
hesion.
is
right
The Measure
that
of the Hours
;
we should
and, hitherto,
who
bring
them.
are
still
Is
decided.
We
Those who
assure us
relig-
formed the
gave birth to the religions. Now that these last have weakened or disappeared, their
sources survive and seek another channel.
When
we
all Is said,
cer-
tain factitious
and
which
changed
in
justice, conscientiousness,
courage, kindness
and honour.
to
it,
to clasp
more
closely, to realise
it
more
It,
effectively
still
we have
ROME
ROME
I
FOR
does so
twenty centuries, Rome has been the storehouse of all that was beautiful;
in
and surely
no other spot
in the
world
much beauty survive. She has created nothing, save perhaps a certain spirit of grandeur, a coordination of
beautiful things; but the most magnificent
moments of
and displayed such energy during their sojourn that on no other point of the globe have they left so many imperishable traces.
Treading her
soil,
we
who
reveals herself
site,
estab-
The Measure
of the Hours
let
fall
opened She was not unworthy to receive those marvels she was already their
beneath the sky.
;
equal.
Beneath her
limpid
azure,
the
gloomy, obscure plants of the north still mate with southern foliage, Inhaling
their brightness
est
of her trees
like
and gladness.
To
an ardent and sombre prayer; the stone-pine. Into which the forest has whis-
head
pered its gravest and sweetest thought the massive evergreen oak, which so willingly
;
no elsewhere
In the
world.
None
can
forget them,
who
understood, or
fall to
them from
sacred
soil.
They
are
Rome
one with the scattered aqueducts, the discrowned mausoleums, the broken arches; one with the columns, heroic
that array the deserted
in their ruin,
Campagna.
of
the
They
eternal
have
assumed the
style
and
silence.
glory.
They
are
Roman.
circle
of mountains,
sonorous
names augustly
charged with snow as dazzling as the memories which they evoke, create around
the city that never can perish a precise
glorious horizon, which divides her
and
from
from the
And,
in
where the
The Measure
silence
of the Hours
and absence; at all the cross-roads where some wounded statue keeps guard in
emptiness;
the
among the basins, the capitals, nymphs and the tritons, water flows
docile
and luminous, obedient still to the orders received two thousand years ago,
decking the immaculate solitude with its mobile fragrance, its garlands of dew and trophies of crystal, its azure plumes and
crowns of pearl.
among
all
it,
It
is
as
to brave
II
it
we
have
ac-
Rome
quired a prodigious power of appropriation
and ennoblement.
fies all
Rome,
their
ignorance
So
far,
it
One might almost believe that, for any work to be carried out here or to live,
her.
it
must
first
cast off
its
original ugliness,
it
Whatever does
hills Is
and
rejected;
it
crumbles
beneath the influence of the watchful genius that has fixed the aesthetic principles of the
city
marble of the heights. Thus, for Instance, the art of the middle ages and the Primitives must have been more active here than
in
any other
appearing, as
The Measure
of the Hours
enough, but no more, for the history of the world, of which this was the centre, not to
be
left incomplete.
harmony with
destinies
of
the
the
eternal
city
Giulio
all,
Romano,
their
Carracci
and,
we
above
find in
work here
a plenitude of power, a
which they manifest in no other place. One feels that they had not to create, but
only to choose from
among
the unrevealed
from
born
:
every
side,
clamouring
to
be
gave substance.
they did not
paint, in the
proper sense of the word, but merely uncovered the veiled images which had haunted the halls and arcades of the
palaces.
is
And
so intimate, so indispensable
Rome
environment that gives
their
It
life
that,
when
to the
museums or
churches of other
proportion,
cities,
unduly vigorous and unduly an arbitrary conception of with decorative, that copies life. It Is for this reason
or photographs of the ceiling of the Sistlne
in-
But
to the traveller
till
who
the Vatican
drunk
In the
mighty will-power that emanates from the thousand fragments of the temples and
public places:
to
effort
which a people of giants hurtle together In a grave and harmonious orgy of enthusiasm
and muscles, turns Into an arch of the very sky and reflects all the scenes of energy, all
the burning virtues the memories of which are
still
restless
The Measure
passionate soul.
of the Hours
Louvre; he
will not
say to himself, as
that
these
them and
to pose as
No,
will
who
injunctions of
that surrounds
him
he
He
may
be
which these
164
two
great
efforts
Rome
produce,
he discovers the
formula here
which the too positive genius of the Quirites had lacked the good fortune or the opportunity to disengage.
standing
all
her
own
initiative,
essential
image which she had promised. It was to the spoils of Greece that she owed
her beauty; and her chief merit was that she understood the beauty of Greek art and
eagerly
amassed
its
It
treasures.
Her
Its
en-
deavours to add to
formity
;
she
was unable
life.
expres-
Her
paintings and
sculptures
heresy,
realities
feeble
originality
her
its
architecture
colossal pro-
that
the
The Measure
of the Hours
seeming deaths of Rome, the latent, uninterrupted tradition which had unceasingly been in travail underground and which now
emerged at last to culminate in their work and to declare to the world what the Empire
had been powerless to say. For these men are more distinctively Roman, more
and
secret desire of that Latin earth
Rome
of the Caesars.
its
That
re-
Rome had
mained
failed in
image.
She had
artificially
Hellenic;
and Greece
from
forms
demanded by
its
ornamental consciousness.
Greece could be only a sure and magnificent starting-point; but her delicate, precise
that
Forum,
surcharged
as
with
the
immense
monstrous
monuments,
among
i66
Rome
Thermae and
violent circuses, or under the
cas.
Angelo were the answer to the call of the empty arches that had waited a thousand
years
;
what
if
marbles?
too
tives
And may we
the
lunettes
whether
ceiling,
penden-
and
of the Farnesina
and
the
do not
paintings
of Pompeii
or Her-
culaneum,
Ill
But
all
this,
perhaps,
is
merely
illusion
and due
The Measure
That power
the
first
is
of the Hours
glance,
to the
and declare
exuberant,
it.
Even
Bernini
rhe-
torical,
ubiquitous
it is
Bernini
of
as irreconcilable as
possible to be with
the
primitive
gravity
he,
and
taciturnity
Rome, even
so
detestable
elsewhere,
certain
somewhat
redundant
greatness.
and declamatory
Moreover,
sides of
Roman
Venus
of the Capitol and of the Vatican, the Sleeping Ariadne, the Meleager and the
Torso of Hercules, the countless marvels of museums as numerous almost as her palaces
think
only
of the
treasures
in
street,
Rome
fragment of marble or bronze which, did some new town contain it, would send pilgrims flocking; a city that can offer the Pantheon of Agrippa, certain columns in
the
Forum,
in a
word, so
many
treasures
that baffled
untiring
its
memory cannot keep pace with admiration a city that has among
;
the
refuge of
all
that
was
who
cultivated beauty as
:
it
be,
is
yet invinci-
defilement.
The immortal
presence of an
assembly of gods, so perfect that no mutila-1 tion can alter the rhythm of body or pose,
protects her against the errors herself
may
commit and prevents the new generations of men from having more empire upon her
169
The Measure
of the Hours
And
little cities
of Hellas that discovered one day and fixed for ever the laws of human beauty. The
beauty of the earth, except for some spots which our sordid industries have ravaged,
little
Au-
inviolate.
and streams,
the evening,
all
dawn and
and
may
and
according to climate
still
latitude, offer us
the
same
spectacles of grandeur
tenderness, the
same
soft,
profound har-
monies, the same fairy-like scenes of changing complexity which they showed to the
Athenian
Nature
was; and, besides, we have grown more sensitive and can to-day admire more freely.
170
Rome
But,
when we
his
own immediate
to our too
we
find that,
owing perhaps
want of
a certain goal
and
an incontestable starting-point, we appear to have lost almost all that the ancients had
been able to establish and make their own.
In
in
all
human
aesthetics,
we
live with,
our houses
we
we
dis-
play such confusion and inexperience that one might truly believe our occupation of
this planet to date
ourselves to be
still
our hands there no longer exists a common measure, an accepted rule or conviction.
Our
painters,
our architects,
171
our sculp-
The Measure
tors,
of the Hours
our
men
of letters
homes, our
ent,
cities
and
we
in
our
seek in a thousand
differ-
possessed so fully.
Should one of
us,
by
and neither the author nor any one would be able to repeat it.
else
And
yet, for a
few happy
years,
man had
is
and
specifically
human; and
it
so
great
was
of his
own
which the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians and all the anterior civilisations had sought in vain
fixed standard
172
found the
Rome
among animals and
flowers,
rocks
;
and
and the
and
palaces, the
of his
houses,
the proportion
and
ornament of the things which he used in his daily life were all derived from the beauty
of this nude and perfect body. This people,
among which
quence,
the
nudity, with
its
natural conse-
irreproachable
harmony of
and
civic obligation,
beauty of the
its
human body
as
spiritual,
as diverse in as mysterious
perfection,
Every
In
to
other ideal has misled and must always mislead the endeavours and efforts of man.
all
came nearer
from
this,
The
beauty proper
little
Rome
in
other
words, the
original beauty
173
which she
The Measure
added
of the Hours
was due
to
For, in
as-
Rome,
as
Talne
tells
us,
"they also
wrestlers.
For
Rome,
same
In this respect,
Is
only an enlarged
life obtain,
the
the
same
Instincts
lies In
and
the procity
The
has
swollen tin
but,
from Xenophon
to
Marcus
Aurellus,
still
It Is
work
to please
We
of
life
Rome
idle; the climate
has remained as
it
was, but
might more
justly
Rome, was an
at the period of
What was
ure,
some measartificial
and exceptional. They still cultivate and admire the human body, but it is almost
always concealed by the toga and the wearing of the toga blurs the pure, clear lines which a multitude of nude and living
;
statues
columns
and
The monuments
lose their
grow
and,
larger
little
and
larger,
form
by
little,
their
is
human harmony.
shrouded and the
artists
The golden
veil shall
standard
of
the
moment
beams.
when
175
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
ACCIDENT
THE
accidents
forces of
nature, the
multiply,
tamer's
dangers increase in proportion to the number of wild animals which he "puts through
their tricks" in the cage.
Formerly,
we much
And
so,
notwith-
standing our more prudent and peaceable manners, it happens to us more often than
to our fathers to look pretty closely
upon
death.
It
is
many
felt
of those
the
who
make
The Measure
of the Hours
II
One of
that
the
first
is
that
of presentiment.
true, as
day?
It Is difficult to reply.
our experience can bear only upon events which "might have turned out worse," or
which, at
It
least,
results.
acci-
quences should not have stirred the deep waters of our Instinct beforehand; and I
believe
it
do not even
As
which
speedy death, seldom possess the strength or lucidity required to satisfy our curiosity. In any case, all that our personal experience
their victims
is
entail a
more or
less
able to gather
on
i8o
this
subject
Is
very
The Psychology
III
of Accident
One
by
we
start at early
dawn,
or steam-boat
that
is
it is
preparing; but, to
make
the picture
more
definite, let
us take, by preference, a
put the
great
fiercest questions to
life
fortune in the
game of
and death.
Suddenly,
on
left,
assuming the deceptive and perfectly transparent appearance of a tree, a wall, a rock, an obstacle of one sort
barring
all
space,
able,
inevitable,
irrevocable,
i8i
The Measure
click, shuts off
it
of the Hours
life,
the horizon of
which
...
and interminable
Forthwith,
an
eager
between our intelligence and our instinct. The attitude of our intelligence, our reason,
our consciousness, by whatever name you
please to call
it, is
extremely interesting.
It
Yet
it
displays
It pictures the
details
realises
tentment that
preserves
it is
its lucidity.
it
Between the
fall
and
the collision,
It
has time to
it
rest, it reflects,
diverts itself,
all
finds leisure
wherein to
think of
manner of other
things, to call
up memories, to make comparisons, trifling and accurate observations: the tree which
we
Is
a plane-tree, there
.
patterned bark.
182
The Psychology
It
.
.
of Accident
one
in the garden.
IS
.
not so
fine as the
The
is
. .
broken
marble.
is
Our
it
we have nothing
almost smiling,
to
it
reproach
with;
it
is
inevitable with a
tempered
curi-
IV
It
is
evident that,
if
our
lives
to
end
in
Luckily,
which whirl,
terrified
children,
upon the
muscular
elbowing
its
way and
The Measure
come within
not what
Its
of the Hours
We
call
:
It
It
Instinct,
matters
we
call
it.
Where was
It
it ?
Where
does
It
come from?
deep down
was somewhere
and thank-
Once
an
poor
rela-
tion, a
We no
longer think of
to
It,
It,
supreme anguish.
decent nature.
Is
utterly unselfish
and bears
no grudge. Instinct knows, besides, that all those ornaments from the height of which
we
look
despise
It
are
ephemeral and frivolous and that. In reality, itself Is the sole master of the human dwell184
The Psychology
ing.
of Accident
is
With
a glance that
issues
and
possibilities
and,
In a
an
and
will,
in
which unconquered
at the
throat of unconquerable
death.
This champion of
like the
existence,
upstarting
fairy-tales
who comes
princess,
works miracles
most precise sense of the word. Above all, under pressure of necessity, it has one
incomparable prerogative it knows nothing of deliberation, of all the obstacles which It
:
raises,
all
It
im-
poses.
for a
moment admits
i8s
The Measure of
when on
the Hours
hope, as
though doubt, anxiety, fear, discouragement were notions absolutely foreign to the
primitive forces that quicken
a granite wall
it
it.
Through
creates
it
in the stone.
it.
It thrusts aside a
upon a wire, slips between two columns which were mathematically too
admit
its
close together to
trees,
it
passage.
Among
has
an
invisible
worm
gnawed
leaves.
It
Its
root;
amid a
cluster of vain
of sharp
flints. It Is
prepared
In
The danger
The Psychology
concerted, turns
its
of Accident
little dis-
head to take a
last
look
at the improbable.
Then
it
resumes the
good savage,
VI
Perhaps
it is
immemorial dangers water, fire, falls, colThere is here, evidently, a lisions, animals.
:
me
is
the
acquaints
with the most complicated, the most unusual inventions of our intelligence.
We
the
all,
to
show
it
most unexpected machine, however foreign and useless to our real and primitive needs
:
187
The Measure of
ment, in an
the Hours
exigency,
it
know
the
management
which con-
structed
it.
That
is
why,
let
as recent or as formidable as
will,
is
we can
no such
un-
Our
Between the
our
instinct,
upon whose
it
draws
at will.
VII
And
yet. If the
all
whole truth be
told,
we no
longer
The Psychology
its
of Accident
It
sovereign intercession.
Is It
never
dies,
never sulks,
many
men
mit
banish
It
sight of
so entirely, humiliate
It
so cruelly,
pinion
It
madness of
to look
where
for
In
They have not the material time which to warn It or to release It from the
It.
;
dungeon wherein they have chained It and, when, at last, full of goodwill, armed with
Its
tools.
It
hurries
up to the
Is
rescue, the
mischief
is
done,
Its
It
too
late,
death has
completed
work.
of
I
Instinct,
These
inequalities
which are
with
the
connected
rather,
suppose,
Place
two motorists
and exactly
in
two
includable
identical
The Measure
quiescence, a spell of
of the Hours
some kind
will save
Of
same
make
illogical,
much
I
Intelligence in the
wrong
direc-
witnessed
it; for,
although
arrived after
among
well
the
known
height,
It
Is
to
escape
the
Barbary pirates. no thoroughfare leads to it, save a terrible zigzag way, which runs down beside;
190
inacesslble
on every
tilted
cart,
over-
persons,
including
woman
old,
was descending
dangerous road,
when
felt
away and
passengers
;
The
and
the
woman, anxious
at the
and
while
peared in the precipice bristling with murderous rocks. Now, by a miracle which is
not unusual where
human
up
in
brushwood,
Insig-
nificant scratches,
child died
by a stone on the road. Two contrary Instincts had here struggled for the mastery;
re-
The Measure
flection
of the Hours
had probably been mingled had made the more awkward movement of the
two.
You
will
in fact, preferable,
whenever the thing is possible, to throw back the source of a mystery within ourselves:
we
in-
discouragement
and impotence.
VIII
We
are able,
recall
it
bonds, to restore
question
would demand
it
In
the meantime,
that,
and
facts, to
that which, In a
things,
word
that expresses
enormous
diminish by so
which
to
Instinct will
order
come
to our aid.
Inappreciable In
humble men.
am
persuaded that It could be proved that a peasant or workman, even If he be the less
active. If
overtaken by
and sound.
In any
vic-
tim
Is
It Is
His un-
The Measure
consciousness,
future,
is
of the Hours
his
Henceforth he
the point of
must
From
view of the great dangers, he is a minus habens, as they used to say in Roman law.
IX
For
all this,
when we
consistency
of our body,
that surrounds
inordinate
power of
all
ber of perils to which we expose ourselves, our luck, compared with that of other living In beings, must needs appear prodigious.
the midst of our machines,
apparatus, our poisons, our
all
fires,
we have more or
our
lives
we
risk
twenty or
ox or the dog.
Now,
In a street
or road accident,
In a flood,
194
an earthquake,
The Psychology
a storm, a
fire,
of Accident
of a tree or a
in the fall
ob-
and
his
more prudent
instinct preserve
him
to a great extent.
Granting equal
risks
more
still
skilful
and
remains that
She
re-
surrounds
it
unaccountable respect and, when, through our own arrogant fault, we oblige her to
hurt
us,
harm
possible.
I9S
IN PRAISE OF
THE
FIST
IN PRAISE OF
THE
FIST
IS
well,
in
the
IT summer,
aptitudes the
holiday
season
of
to
of
that
agility
most
Increase
qualities
Its
strength.
and
Its
as
the
body
of
fine
animal,
face
all
healthy,
life's
formidable,
igencies.
I
ready
to
ex-
remember.
when
self
be carried away by
my
subject
and was
Sword
in
Publishers* Note.
199
The Measure
has endowed us
justice I
:
of the Hours
the
fist.
mean
This
in-
am
anxious to repair.
the
if
fist
form each
other's
on excellent terms.
is,
or
should be, only an exceptional weapon, a sort of ultima et sacra ratio. should
We
it
we surround
those criminal
which may end in a sentence of death. The fist, on the contrary, is preeminently
the every-day, the
human weapon,
the only
weapon
bility,
The
selves,
fact
is
that, if
we
without
vanity,
most brittle
us,
and
Compare
of
Its
body without
it.
veniencing
and weigh
its
what
Its
it is
abdomen crack or
yield.
it
the casings of
fore-
wings
As
is,
stag-beetle,
By
still
comparison, therefore,
we and
and
the ma-
jority of
mammals
Our
skeleton
alone,
which
is
as
it
Is
Look
at
201
The Measure
cage,
of the Hours
which presents only a series of diagonals which we hardly dare touch with
the finger-tips.
Now
it is
life
on every
side,
that
we have
we
insects.
We
have here, it must be agreed, a very curious and a very disconcerting aberration, an
initial folly,
peculiar to the
human
by
race, that
In order to return
all
other
living beings, if
we
of a different order,
selves,
we
to
ought,
among
our-
among men,
own
bodies.
strictly to the
fist,
which
is
to
its
man wh^t
Its
horns are to
lion,
the
fist
should
protection, justice
and revenge.*
wiser
race
At
the end of a
few generations, we should thus succeed In spreading and putting into force a sort of
panic-stricken respect of
human
life.
And
exactly in accordance
brought about by the intensive practice of pugilism, in which all the hopes of military glory would be centred. Now selection is,
after
all,
it is
the
first,
203
The Measure
of the Hours
II
somewhat alarming light upon the forfeiture of some of our most valuable instincts.
soon perceive that, in all that concerns the use of our limbs agility, dex-
We
terity,
muscular strength, resistance to pain ^we have sunk to the lowest rank of the
or the batrachians.
mammals
From
this
we should be
entitled to a
The
kick of
would be impossible to improve, by the most learned lessons, their instinctive manner of using their natural
It
weapons.
But we, the "Hominldae," the proudest of the primates, do not know how to strike a blow with our fist We do not
I
204
know which exactly is the w; of Look at two draymc our kind! wo come to who blows could peasants nothing
even
:
be more pitiable. After a copious and dilatory broadside of insults and threats, they seize each other by the throat and hair,
make
at other,
feet,
random,
go and.
If
one of them
succeed
blindly
in releasing
hurried, stunted
and sputtering little blows and the combat would never end if the
evoked by the shame
treacherous knife,
of the incongruous sight, did not suddenly, almost spontaneously leap from the pocket of one of the two.
On
no
two
pugilists:
useless words,
no gropings, no anger;
certainties that
the calmness of
two
know
what
lies
before them.
205
The
athletic attitude
The Measure
of the Hours
of the guard, one of the finest of which the male body is capable, logically exhibits
all
the muscles
best advantage.
particle
of
Every one of them has its pole in one or other of the two massive fists charged to
the full with energy.
plicity of the attack!
And
Three blows, no
secular
experience,
more,
the
fruits
of
Three
blows.
synthetic, irresistible,
As soon
them frankly
is
ended, to
who triumphs
no wish to abuse
and with no
dangerous hurt to the conquered, who is simply reduced to impotence and unconsciousness during the time needed for all illwill to evaporate.
Soon
206
man
no lasting
damage, because the resistance of his bones and his organs is strictly and naturally proportioned
to
the
Ill
It
may seem
those
is
countries
where
it
is
generally
practised
and
cultivated,
becomes a pledge
Our
aggressive
our
watchful
susceptibility,
which our jealous vanity moves, all these arise, at bottom, from the sense of our
weakness and of our physical
inferiority,
which
toil
as best they
may
to overawe,
irritable
The Measure
surround us
selves
of the Hours
that
The more
we
feel our-
disarmed
are
in the face
of attack, the
more
we
prove to others and to persuade ourselves Courthat no one attacks with impunity.
age becomes the more touchy, the more
in-
how
the
What will
we
this
poor prudent
It is
do
if
upon our
danger.
instinct that
hour of
Upon
our
instinct
devolve the
in daily life
affairs
dismissed
and
from the supreme council that, when its name is called, it comes forth from
retreat like one grown old in captivity and suddenly dazzled by the light of day.
its
What
resolution will
:
it
take ?
Where
is it
to strike
to choose
the elbow,
or the nails?
its
no longer
knows
which
it
wanders about
poor dwelling,
sleeve, cour-
is
dotingly,
pulls
them by the
quarrel,
which
at
after numberless
sions,
piteous
indefi-
nitely impotent.
He, on the contrary, who knows the source of justice which he holds in his two closed
fists
has
no
need
all,
for
self-persuasion.
he knows.
The
insult
act of violence
The Measure
and
is
of the Hours
all
able to say to
offend him,
"Thus
single magic movement stops the insolence. Why make this movement ? He ceases even
to think of
it is
it,
so certain
is its
efficacy.
And
in
striking a
last
the
he at length resolves to raise against the most powerful brute the sovereign hand that regrets beforehand its
extremity,
too-easy victory.
210
THE FORGIVENESS OF
JURIES
IN-
THE FORGIVENESS OF
INJURIES
Is
that
transmuted.
To
word
"forgive,"
which appears, at first sight, one of the most beautiful In the language: does this
word
still,
did
It
almost divine amnesty which we assign t6 Is It not one of the terms that best set it ?
forth the good-will of men. Inasmuch as
It
ised?
When we
us,
say to one
who
all Is
has
in-
jured
ten,"
forgot-
how much
213
The Measure
of
this
of the Hours
this,
speech ?
At
most,
which
is
the
only engagement
into
own
the
will.
wrong
membering
his
it.
at a given
is
moment,
finds
never
is
known
to
For us he
only an image
in
him has an
revealing
powerful
a
self-
face.
conveys
host
of
more
sincere
that will
But
this
more than an
a
ideal
We
are
in
214
world wherein,
The
either
Forgiveness of Injuries
few beings live In accordance with the truth which their presence there foretells. At
long
last,
mysterious face.
It
A plain,
the acts
and
us.
Kindnesses
with
attractive
and
delicate
It
with
this
deep grooves. In reality, It Is only under mask, modelled according to the recol-
we
perto
ceive the
man who
If
Is
approaches us;
and
say to him.
he have offended
us, that
we
forgive him
that
tantamount to
telling
him
215
The Measure
of the Hours
II
It
IS
a question of
knowing what
influence
have upon
has injured
man who
many
is
In
this, as in
so
other respects,
roused,
it
its first,
back to the
At
the sum-
mit of
this ideal,
we might
set up, as a
sym-
bol, the
woman
legendary group of the Christian burying, at the risk of her life, the
There
this
is
no
is
woman
human
rea-
dominates pagan antiquity. Nevertheless, it does not exhaust the limits of Christian
Suppose that Nero be not dead, but staggering on the last confines of
forgiveness.
life
save him.
The
Christian will
216
owe him
this
The
Forgiveness of Injuries
though she know for certain which she is restoring to him
time, bring back the perserise
rescue, even
same
cution.
She can
higher
still:
imagine
same moment
enemy who
will
doom
her to destruction.
Ill
Of this
an
count,
ideal,
which
Is
infinite
reward for
are
is
what
we
to think in a
world that
At which of the three superhuman moments shall we call him mad who flings himself
looks for nothing in another world?
into one of those three abysses of forgive-
day find a few traces of footsteps around the first; but no one will now stray around the two
217
ness?
We
The Measure
others.
of the Hours
a sort of heroic
march of
;
faith
which
is
no longer possible
but, taking
away
faith,
human
that
were a presentiment of what man would like to do if life were not so cruel.
as
it
And
let
this kind,
upon the
spirit
we imagine on
choice
end by
the
which
we would make on
we
make
In the valley.
218
The
Forgiveness of Injuries
IV
Moreover, we can learn to forgive
completely as the Christian.
as
We
are no
this
world which
we
see
In
our head.
his,
We need
escape
but directed
in
order to
from
It.
The
did not
forget
the
Injury;
;
he
did
first
not
pro-
but he
immensity.
closely
mensity,
more
considered,
not
Both,, in
immensity wherein
to the heights
we
struggle.
Religion
made no
219
The Measure
give
of the Hours
them an
we
They would
It
contented
effects as
the real
"We must
It
God
wishes
and
has Himself set the most complete example of forgiveness that It Is possible to Imagine."
fol-
low without opening our eyes. Is exactly the same as that given to us by the needs and
the profound innocence of
all life at
the
And,
If this latter
first,
comas
is
mand
go so far
enemy because he
our enemy, this is not to say that It is less sublime, but that It addresses hearts which
are
more
distlnterested
220
The
Forgiveness of Injuries
of attainment.
In
sacrifice,
for
way, a whole series of spiritual victories which are more and more painful,
are, in this
they
rise
not in the
in the
juggles
with balls of
is
fire
also
doing a very
courage with the devotion, nearly always less dangerous though it be, of the man
who
flings
In any case
and
the
command
of which
it
we were speaking
from a foreign
will, it
221
The Measure
in
of the Hours
Immense
spectacle
their real
Ill-
There
Injustice
Is
no more
Ingratitude,
is
or perversity,
there
poor beings move, guided by a darkness which each of them follows In exceeding
good
he
Is
fulfilling a
together
many
and no
less exact
be present to our eyes, let us not fear lest it should disarm us and make victims or
dupes of us
realities.
In a life
There are very few among us that have need to strengthen their means
of defence, to whet their prudence, their
222
The
Forgiveness of Injuries
Life's instinct
this
but too
our equilibrium on the side opposed to our All the efforts of a petty daily interests.
watchful thought
difficulty
suffice
to
keep us
erect.
But
it
is
no
and underlet
stands.
Above
all,
There
is
right to instinct
There
it:
it
the unconscious.
But there
223
is
a purer
and
The Measure
more
subtle part
of the Hours
evaporates in space.
Every
in
act allows of as
many
are
different in-
terpretations
as
there
diverse
forces
our intelligence.
first
The
lowest of them
appear at
and
just,
to come,
we do
little
not struggle
without
respite
ment,
all
by
little
our youth had formed the noblest and most fruitful regions of our mind. Soon there
would remain
end of our
resi-
most miserable
due of wisdom.
It
is
we
can
moment should
gross treasure
rise in
proportion as the
existence accumulates.
224
According as our
The
roots,
it
Forgiveness of Injuries
indispensable
that
it
should
should incessantly
up, air
and quicken
so
easy-going,
so
tranquil,
so
in-
genuous and so sincere, knows full well that it hides some essential thing from us and,
;
to drive
it
to
its
most
to a
we should end
it
certainty
by wringing from
the supreme
avowal
that,
upon
is
when
all
and everything
tation
is
225
Is
IT especially
the
beginning
of
the
which
poem
has
in
the mountain.
there, long-lived
It will
probably continue
and impregnable, and will gain in purity and intensity all that it has lost elsewhere in extent and abundance.
Little
by
little it
its
vain
didactic,
descriptive
ments, soon to be
itself alone,
to say
The Measure of
human
which
is
im-
is
who
strives to maintain a
work by
repre-
senting in
it
finer
than
tragedy of the
by Corneille and Racine, that the romantic tragedy of the Germans and Victor Hugo
all
The
it
great
drama of
had been
only
the
unknown and
discovered,
inexhaustible source
has
hitherto
yielded
results.
And
modern
life,
which
have taken the place of all the others and in the direction of which Ibsen attempted certain excavations, these mysteries
have been
man
to erect
and
visibly
and
efficaciously
to govern the
character of a play.
And
yet there
is
no
felt Its
presentiment:
it is
drama
finer
is
greater
and
than
II
Let
us, in
when
know whither
to turn
their steps,
examples of those dramas which enlarge the truth without violating it, one of those rare
dramas which,
turies,
still
after
cen-
in all
The Measure
their parts
:
of the Hours
Shakspeare's King
I allude to
Lear,
It Is safe to declare, as I
once said
not
it
without some
Impossible to
little
exaggeration, for
Is
avoid exaggeration In the light and exquisite attack of fever which seizes all Shakspeare's devoted admirers
whenever one of
It is
his masterpieces
Is
revived
literatures of
most
stirring,
dramatic
poem that has ever been written. Were we to be asked from the height of another
planet which
Is
the synthetic
and represenIdeal of
man
ised,
which the
is
most
fully real-
seems to
me
for a
name King Lear, They could only moment weigh the claims of two or
Greek
stage, or
of
that
III
Prometheus, the Orestes, CEdipus Tyrannus are wonderful but isolated trees,
whereas King Lear is a marvellous forest. Let us admit that Shakspeare's poem is less
clear,
the
;
of the
word
mous
less
us grant that
it
as
its
good
qualities
it
this fact
none the
remains, that
in
the
The Measure
tragic beauties
of the Hours
It
which
contains.
know
work
Is
not to be
dimensions of a statue do not necessarily bear a relation to Its aesthetic value. Nevertheless,
It
add
certain
;
vital,
and yet coordinate gestures; that It Is less difficult to write one tragic and mighty act
which three or four persons play their parts than to write five which are filled with
in
whole moving crowd and which maintain that same tragic and powerful note on an
a
equal level during a period five times as long as the other. Well, by the side of
King Lear, the longest Greek tragedies are little more than plays In one act.
234
On
It
If
we
try to
compare
Its
thought
Is
pro-
form of Elslnore reach and, for a moment, illumine, like gleams from beyond the tomb,
more
more general and more normally human, the colouring more monotonous, but more
majestically
and more harmoniously superb, the intensity more constant and more widespread, the lyricism more continuous,
more overflowing and more Illusive and yet more natural, nearer to the realities of
everyday
life,
more
The Measure
cause
it
of the Hours
passion,
because
it
surrounds a situation
is,
nevertheit
does not
man.
IV
Hamlet,
Macbeth,
Prometheus,
the
poems
which are more exalted than the others because they are unfolded on a sort of sacred
mountain
This
is
terpieces,
places
Hamlet
for
incontestably
above
Othello
and,
Othello,
is
instance,
although
as passionately,
as profoundly
doubtless,
more
normally
human.
They owe to this mountain which carries them between heaven and earth the
236
Now,
if
ments which compose it are borrowed from a variable and arbitrary supernaturalism
;
it is
or
and
this
it is
that gives
it
a place apart
among
the
four or
poems of the world in King Lear there is no supernaturalism proper. The gods, the inhabitants of the great imaginary worlds do
five
great dramatic
itself is
no more than passion run mad; and yet the immense drama unravels Its five acts on a summit as high, as
here quite inward,
is
overladen with
anxieties as
spells,
all
the traditional forces though of heaven and hell had vied In ardour to
its
superstruct
original
peaks.
The
absurdity of the
anecdote
(all
the
great master-
237
The Measure of
pieces,
the Hours
more or
which
less
developed.
solely
of
enormous
human
strata,
of
general
most human
in
human
nature.
That
est
is
needs an
and wholly
stirred
by the
On
man, from
they rise up of
all
in respect
the
spiritual
and
Shakspeare to return among us upon earth, he could no longer write Hamlet or Macbeth.
He
would
main august
and gloomy ideas upon which those poems rest would no longer carry them, whereas
he would not need to alter a situation nor a
line In
King Lear.
The
tragedies
most organically lyrical dramatic poem that was ever realised, the only one In the world In which the magnlfialso the
239
The Measure of
the Hours
There
is
There
is
no denying
it:
no scene
in
the
comedy, as Alfred de Vigny said, is ever more than a conversation between two or
three people
affairs.
to talk of their
They
in
the most
of
reality,
little
as pos-
sible
in every-
day
life,
But,
in
this rather
elementary
we hardly ever
is
express in
words anyin
thing that
brilliant or
profound
our
inner existence.
mingle with great and beautiful spectacles, with the highest mysteries of nature, they
feelings which,
betray
Now,
In life,
the
drama
follows
It
should shatter
The
poet has
merely eloquent, but unreal (and this is the mistake of our classical tragedies, of
the plays of Victor
all
Hugo and
,
of almost
German
romanticists, a
or else he
and
dull.
this choice.
Shakspeare did not escape the dangers of In Romeo and Juliet, for Instance,
and
in
most of
he pours forth into rhetoric and Incessantly sacrifices to the splendour, to the abundance
241
The Measure of
the Hours
and
cue.
VI
On
pieces he
manner
in
He
a sort of subterfuge to
sorts.
which he always
re-
As
it
who
mag-
nificence cannot
mad
In real life
(for
it
is
mad
alone express
unsettles
the
and thus opens the dike that held captive the swollen lyrical flood. Henceforward, he speaks freely by their mouths
tagonists
;
242
fear-
be told that
also,
it
is
out of place.
Henceforward,
the lyricism
of his
great works is more or less high, more or less wide in proportion to the madness of his hero. Thus it is intermittent and restrained in
Macbeth and
Othello, because
Thane of Cawdor
and the rages of the Moor of Venice are no more than passional crises; it is slow and
pensive in Hamlet, because the madness of
the Prince of
Denmark
is
overflow
as in
King Lear,
irresistible,
torrential, uninterrupted
and
hurling together,
in
im-
mense and miraculous images, the oceans, the forests, the tempests and the stars, because the magnificent insanity of the dispossessed and desperate old king extends
from
the
first
243
merely to recall here a few facts 1WISFI known to every botanist. I have made
not a single discovery and
tribution
is
my
modest con-
observations.
have
no intention of reviewing all the proofs of intelligence which the plants give us. These
proofs are innumerable and continual,
pecially
effort
es-
among
is
of vegetable
understanding
concentrated.
Though there be plants and flowers are awkward or unlucky, there is none
IS
The Measure
work,
all
of the Hours
have the magnificent ambition to overrun and conquer the surface of the
existence
To
to
attain
of the law
that chains
difficulties
them
to the soil,
overcome
much
And
to
there-
to
combinations,
to
traps
which,
anism,
in
mech-
ballistics, aerial
man.
II
It
to trace
of stamens and
pistil,
harmonious
and
dazzling
248
colours,
the
The
concoction of nectar,
useless to the flower
which
is
absolutely
and
is
manufactured
only
to
attract
and
retain
butterfly or
moth
.
the
liberator
bee,
is
that
to bring to the flower the kiss of the distant, invisible, motionless lover.
.
This vegetable world, which to us appears so placid, so resigned, in which all seems
acquiescence, silence, obedience, meditation,
which impatience, revolt against destiny are the most vehement and stubborn. The essential oris,
in
the
its
it
Indissolubly to the
soil.
If
be
difficult to
discover
among
the great
in the case of
is
condemns
to
its
it
to immobility
from
birth
better
death.
Therefore
it
knows
our
than
we,
who
disseminate
249
efforts,
The Measure
against
of the Hours
what
first
to rise in revolt.
And the
energy of its fixed idea, mounting from the darkness of the roots to become organised
and full-blown
in the flower, is
an incom-
parable spectacle.
It exerts itself
wholly
can, to
conquer the space in which destiny encloses it, to approach another kingdom, to penetrate into* a
moving and
it
active world.
its
attains
object not as
to succeed in
a different
surprising as though
we were
which
destiny assigns to us or in
into a
laws of matter?
flower sets
We
shall see
that the
man
a prodigious example of
we had
The
flower In our
we may
would be very
different
from what
It Is.
Ill
among
the greater
number of
plants,
fruit.
in
any
case, discloses
only a
less
complex
Contrary to that which takes place In the animal kingdom and because of the terrible law of absolute
Immobility, the chief and worst
the seed
Is
enemy of
We
are in
a strange world,
to
move from
place to place,
know
stifle
that
their
falls at
the foot
either lost or
doomed
251
The Measure
mense
effort to
of the Hours
Hence
the Im-
to sprout in wretchedness.
throw
off
the yoke
and con-
Hence the marvellous systems of dissemination, of propulsion, of navigation of the air which we find on every side
quer space.
and the plain: among others, to mention, In passing, but a few of the most curious, the aerial screw or samara of
In the forest
the
Maple
the
Momordica;
would,
in
fact,
be impossible.
little
If
one
had not
practised a
botany, to believe
The
in all the
Consider, for instance, the charming seedpots of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the five valves
of the Balsam, the Hve bursting capsules of Do not forget, upon occathe Geranium.
sion, to
examine the
find at
common Poppy-head,
herbalist's.
which we
any
This good,
big head shelters a prudence and a foresight that deserve the highest praise.
We
know
seeds.
that
it
Its object
It
were
to split, to fall or to
stalk.
But
only outlet
is
when
and
ripe,
bends over on
Its
peduncle, sways
breath of wind
in space,
with
The Measure of
the Hours
Mountain-ash, lurk
Inside a sweet
husk?
remarkable understanding of
that
causes
we hardly
of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
facts can
And
yet the
be no otherwise explained.
Is
The
Is
sweet husk
The
cause
it
Is
Indigestible.
He
flies
away
but stripped of
Its
case
and
birthplace.
254
The
IV
But
let us
and you
will per-
pected
little
intelligence at work.
Here, for
two poor creeping plants which you have met a thousand times on your walks, for we find them in every spot, down
instance, are
to the
to
which a
pinch of
varieties
cago)
two
weeds"
in
the humblest
One
little
bears a reddish
the other a
them crawling and hiding among the proud grasses, one would
size of a pea.
To
see
never suspect that, long before the illustrious geometrician and physician of Syracuse,
they had discovered the Archimedean screw
and endeavoured
to apply
255
it
not to the
rais-
The Measure of
the Hours
They
ney through the air. One of them, the yellow, has even improved upon the apparatus of the red
the spiral
on
its
passage, to either the clothes of the pedestrians or the fleece of the animals. It clearly
by
and so on
to those of
The most
is
its
futility.
The poor
Their remark-
if
they
fell
from a
certain
lofty tree or
The
tall
Graminea;
on the
have hardly
taken a quarter of a turn before already have here a they touch the ground.
We
little
who have
little
will
Let us observe,
varieties of the
in
passing,
that
other
we
are
now
pod
to the
screw
or
spiral.
Another
or
variety,
the
Medicago
rounds
its
scutellata,
Snail-medick,
ball.
It
would seem,
we
are assist-
The Measure
of the Hours
destiny
and
its
is
way
of ensuring
future.
Was
the
it
the yellow
to
it^
Lucern
itself,
saying to
its
that,
it is
since
leaves
inevitable
and right
progeny ? And, lastly, is it not thanks to this new effort and to this happy thought that the Lucern with the yellow flowers is
infinitely
sturdier
its
It
is
in the
whole
and
roots,
that
we
discover, if
we
258
stoop for a
moment
The
many
traces of a
Think of
and courageous
strife
of trees In danger.
As
me
the
Loup,
all
fragrant
with
tree.
violets,
It
by was easy
on
Its
twisted
drama of
Its
life.
A bird
which was
tain;
as perpendicular as tree
an Iron curthere,
and the
was born
two
hundred yards above sible and solitary, among the burning and barren stones. From the first hour. It had
the torrent, Inaccessent
Its
But
The Measure
this
of the Hours
that
was only the hereditary care of a species knows the aridity of the South. The
young stem had to solve a much graver and more unexpected problem: it started
from a
vertical plane, so that
Its
top, in-
down
It
was obliged,
therefore,
first flight,
stub-
bornly to bend
form of an elbow
like a
and
thus,
his head,
by means of an Incessant
contraction to
Its
will, tension
and
heavy crown of
all
Thenceforward,
all
the preoccupations,
The
revealed, one
solici-
knew how
It
received
The
from the
Year by
out in the
dome grew
while
a
heavier, with no
itself
and
heat,
hidden
canker
gnawed deep
ported
it
arm
that sup-
Then, obeying I know not what order of the instinct, two stout
in space.
roots,
two
from the
moor
it
to the granite
they really been evoked by the distress or were they perhaps waitfirst
Had
Was
it
only
happy accident?
What human
?^
eye will
of intelligence of
another root, whose exploits are related by Brandis in his Ueber Lehen und Polaritdi. In penetrating into
the earth, it had come upon an old boot-sole : in order to cross this obstacle, which, apparently, the root was
261
The Measure of
VI
the Hours
Among
and initiative,
do no more than
recall the
are
all
acquainted.
among which
the
Hedysarum
little
gyrans,
Leguminosa,
which
is
a native of
in
its
road,
it
subdivided
left in
itself into as
many
parts as there
;
were holes
the
sole
by
then,
when
the obstacle
was overcome,
its
it came together again and united all divided radicles into a single homogeneous tap-root.
262
The
honour of the
f
divided
base of the
first.
Each of
these leaflets
is
its
own.
They
They
are
so
sensitive
to
light
They
this
we
and
VII
But these
plants, to
many
others,
little
beyond the mysterious and probably imaginary ridge that separates the vegetable
263
The Measure
of the Hours
from the animal kingdom. It is not necessary to seek so high; and we find as much
Intelligence
and almost
as
much
visible spon-
we
where the plant Is hardly distinct from clay or stone. We have here the fabulous class
of the Cryptogamia, which can be studied
only under the microscope, for which reason
we
will pass
It
by
In silence,
although the
work of
Mushrooms,
In Its
Incomparable
marvels
As the fertilisation of their performed. flowers cannot be accomplished underwater, each of them has thought out a different system
to allow of the dry dissemination of the
pollen.
Is
to say,
stuff
the
common Sea-wrack
264
with which we
In
The
a regular diving-bell;
it
at the top
water
rises.
and burst
The Trapa
nutans,
Then, when the fertilisation is accomplished, the air in the tumour is replaced by a mucilaginous
fluid,
where the
fruits ripen.
is
The
scribes
even
de-
in his
"These
plants,
In
when
The Measure
they He on the mud.
trailing stalk
Is
of the Hours
Their long,
slim,
At
the axilla
see a sort
we
in Its
pyriform pocket with an aperture pointed upper end. This aperture has
a valve,
outside Inwards
edges are provided with ramified hairs; the Inside of the pocket
Its
Is
little
secretory hairs
which give
has come,
with
air: the
more
It it
more
tightly
closes
the valve.
The
It
result
Is
that
Not
till
sembling quaint
less
orange or rubiginous
266
During the
The
months of June, July and August, they display their fresh colours gracefully above
the
muddy
water,
around them.
amid the vegetable decay But fertilisation has been efambient water presses
utricles, forces
It In,
down
the
to descend to the
mud
again."
not Interesting to see thus gathered in this Immemorial little apparatus some of
Is
it
human Inven-
sure of fluids
and
air,
the Archimedean
to account?
principle studied
and turned
As
a
the author
observes,
thought that a similar process had been In In a world use for thousands of years."
267
The Measure
of Intelligence,
of the Hours
destitute
we begin by Imagining that the least of our Ideas creates new combinations and relations. When we come to look Into things more closely, It appears Infinitely
probable that
It
Is
Impossible for us to
We
are the
find
comers on
this earth,
we simply
we
it
which
all
When
said,
But we
will return
VIII
We
without
mentioning the life of the most romantic of them all: the legendary Valllsneria,
an hydrocharad whose
in the
nuptials
The
a
The
herb,
Valllsneria
rather insignificant
possessing
none of the strange grace of the Water-lily or of certain submersed verdant plants. But
it
in
giving
ence
is
a beautiful idea.
Its
whole
exist-
moment
it
of
when
its
aspires to
new
life.
Then
floats
peduncle,
rises,
emerges and
sur-
From
a neighbouring
it
through
hope,
world.
But,
half-
feel
very source of their too short; they will never reach the
stalk, the
abode of
which the
269
The Measure
achieved
of the Hours
pistil
can be
Is there
ordeal In nature?
that
longing,
the
the
so
nearly
the
attained,
transparent
fatality,
Impossible
It
with
not
visible
obstacle!
would be
Insoluble, like
our
own tragedy
It.
upon
this earth,
Is
were
It
pected element
mingled with
Did
the
males foresee the disillusion to which they would be subjected? One thing is certain,
that they have locked up In their hearts a
bubble of
air,
even as
we
lock up in our
though they hesitated for a moment; then, with a magnificent effort, the finest, the most supernatural that I know of In all
Is
as
order to
rise to
bond that
them
to
They
tear
themselves
270
from
their
The
peduncle and, with an Incomparable flight, amid bubbles of gladness, their petals dart
up and break the surface of the water. Wounded to death, but radiant and free,
they float for a
less
moment
accomplished,
to perish,
drift
away
up her
spiral
and descends
to
the
Must we
is
spoil this
charming
at
picture,
which
strictly accurate,
of the
light,
by looking
also
from that
of the shadow?
Why
not?
There are
sometimes on the shady side truths quite as This interesting as those on the bright.
delightful tragedy
is
perfect only
when we
indi-
of the
species.
But,
when we observe
them
act
271
viduals,
we
awk-
The Measure
of the Hours
wardly and In the wrong way In this Ideal At one time, the male flowers will plan.
ascend to the surface
when
At
another,
when
break their
stalks.
We
Individual
In
man
pre-
a sort of equilibrium
secret of
the great
our future.
IX
The
parasitic plants, again, present curi-
commonly
called
The
has
its
the Dodder.
stalk attained a
than
it
voluntarily abandons
its
roots to
twine about
It
digs
its
suckers.
Thenceforth,
prey.
;
it
lives
exclusively
is
upon
Its
Its perspicacity
not to be deceived
it
will refuse
it
of
its
or Flax that
taste.
calls
our attention
to the Creepers,
to
lived a
often
the
had occasion
sort of
to admire
the instinct,
directs
power of
vision, that
the
Move
the
The Measure
Schopenhauer,
in
of the Hours
Ueber den
on
Willen
in
therefore
where he
Need
add
that, in
that, be-
almost inexhaustible?
Among
fices
so
many
and precautions,
us mention also,
Hyoseris radiata, or Starry Swine's-succory, a little yellow-flowered plant, not unlike the
race,
it
The
seeds:
are
are
easily
detached and
furnished with
wings wherewith to
to the wind, while the
abandon themselves
and are
when
the
decomposed.
The
case of the
Xanthium spinosum, or
how
well-con-
This Xanthium
with
is
hideous
prickles.
weed,
bristling
barbaric
in
Not long
ago,
it
was unknown
Western Europe and no one, naturally, had dreamt of acclimatising it. It owes its conquests to the hooks
sules of
fleece
it
which
its
fruits
and which
cling to the
of the animals.
native of Russia,
wool imported from the depths of the Muscovite steppes and one might follow on the map the stages
to us in bales of
;
came
new world.
275
The Measure of
The
simple
little
the Hours
has set
Its
thought working
avoid the
In
another direction.
ApIn-
of Importunate and
furnishes
Its
delicate Insects
stalks with
glandular hairs,
in
whence oozes a
viscid fluid
their
houses.
tem.
Dreading the ants In particular, they discovered that It was enough, in order to
under the node of each
stalk.
This
Is
exactly
when
they
draw
of tar around
The
means employed by the plants. In an excellent popular work, Les Plant es originates,
to
which
who
wishes for
fuller details,
M. Henri Coupin
startling
examines
weapons.
We
a
have
first
M.
Lothelier,
has
made
number of
interesting experiments,
result-
shade and
damp
On
place in which
grows
is
as
though
it
felt that,
as almost
among
is
the rocks or in
called
upon
its
to
make
mighty
effort
to redouble
defences
against an
remarkable
The Measure
of the Hours
who
has
adopted
them
in
his
fenced
grounds/
Certain plants,
ginecB,
among
hard
bristles.
add poison.
'
Among
the
have ceased to
defend
themselves, the most striking case is that of the Lettuce : "In its wild state," says the author whom I have
mentioned above,
** if
we
break a stalk or a
it,
leaf,
we
which vigorously defend the plant against the assaults of the slugs. On the other hand, in the cultivated species derived from the
former, the latex is almost missing, for which reason the plant, to the despair of the gardeners, is no longer able to resist and allows the slugs to eat it."
It is nevertheless right to
add
is
rarely
young
plants,
whereas
*
it
becomes
when
its
'cabbage"
its
and when
it
runs to seed.
life,
Now
at the
it is
especially at the
first,
commencement of
budding of
tender leaves, that the plant needs to defend itself. One is inclined to think that the cultivated Lettuce
loses
its
head a
little,
it
no longer
278
The
ful
the animals.
powerBut the
strangest
those which
I will
defend them-
Moreover,
almost
all
the
Graminea,
in
and
snails,
add lime
to their tissues.
X
Before broaching the study of the complicated forms of apparatus rendered necessary by cross-fertilisation,
among
the thou-
our gardens let us mention the Ingenious Ideas of some very simple flowers. In which
the
die
grooms and brides are born, love and The typical sysin the same corolla.
Is
tem
well enough
known
279
the stamens, or
frail
and numerous,
The Measure
But the
of the Hours
Often the pollen, when ripe, falls quite naturally from the top of the stamens upon the pistil but very often,
to repeat itself.
;
also,
pistil
and stamens
are' of the
same
away,
height,
far
or the
Then
come
Sometimes, as
stamens, at
on
moment
of
fertilisa-
The
Elsewhere are
dif-
thus, in the
Primroses,
to gather
that of the
and
docile stamens,
fat,
around the
in
wait expectant
the
At
conjugal
command
of the female,
a sort of call
by
Then come
281
the third,
The Measure
the whole
service.
of the Hours
Next,
Here
in
verity
is
love to order!
me
so extraordinary that I at
I
first
was
have
but seldom
makes
It
is
a mistake.
superfluous
to
multiply these
in-
stances.
A stroll in
the
woods or
fields will
make
a thousand observa-
as
But,
would mention
it
displays any
of
its
movement of
love.
I allude to the
Nigella
Damascena,
282
or
Fennel-flower,
The
Devil-in-a-bush,
Ragged-lady;
efforts of
so
popular
little
This plant
is
found
in a
wild state
in the
and
is
North
is
in
old-fashioned gardens.
blossom
popular name
in
light,
At
tremely long
stand close-grouped in
like
five
queens clad
inaccessible.
lessly
in
the
to
their knees.
And
the heart
The Measure of
the Hours
of this palace of sapphires and turquoises, In the gladness of the summer days, begins
drama without words or catastrophe which one might expect, the drama of
the
But
:
brilliancy fades,
Its
petals fall
and the
life.
At
a given
moment,
as
Irresistible
command
concerted
all
together
bend backwards, stoop and gracefully cull the golden dust of the nuptial kiss on the
lips
XI
The
unexpected abounds here, as we see. great volume might be written on the In284
The
Romanes
But
this
Intelligence.
a
to
we
think ourselves, a
privileged.
little
too valnglorl-
ously,
the
random
result of observation
I
and
cir-
cumstance.
It
Is
for the
moment, the carnivorous flowers, Droseras, Nepenthes and the rest, which
approach the animal kingdom and would
demand
a special
and expansive
Is
study, In
believed to be
passive
and
inani-
mate.
28s
The Measure
To
of the Hours
let
us
speak of the flower as though all that it has realised had been foreseen and conceived in
the
manner of men.
much we must
away from
it.
leave to
how much
it
take take
For the
present, let
will.
There
is
no
denying that it appears to be provided with both and to deprive it of either we should have to resort to very obscure hypotheses.
;
It
is
there,
then,
motionless
on
its
stalk, sheltering in a
dazzling tabernacle
Apto
union
of
stamens
in
and
pistil
be
accomplished
this
tabernacle
of love.
And many
flowers
do so consent.
But
to many others there is propounded, big with awful threats, the normally insoluble
problem of
sult
cross-fertilisation.
As
the re-
The
isation
that
is
ma
that surround
rapidly
told,
force
Soon only those survived which, through some anomaly, such as the
self-fertilisation.
pistil,
rendering
inaccessible
to
the
sand
revolutions;
heredity
;
finally
deter-
XII
We
what
light these
let
explanations throw.
The Measure
study more
of the Hours
field,
to
in-
And
a
from
the house,
bees,
we have
here, frequented
by the
There
is
no one, even
among
knows the
an unpretending Lahiata
opens violently, like a hungry mouth, to snap the rays of the sun in passing. For
that matter,
varieties,
it
presents a large
detail
have
am
not
all
of which
number of
is
this
a curious
But
common
as
though
celebrate
spring's
all
passage,
the walls of
my terraces of olive-trees.
I assure
you that
The
more
luxuri-
more
happily,
more
fragrantly
adorned.
One seems
fumes of the
hottest,
when noon-day
To come
contained in the
upper lip, which forms a sort of hood, in which are also the two stamens, or male
organs.
To
stigma
is
no hope of reaching
itself
Moreover,
that
in
made
protenandrous,
to say,
the
fit
pistil,
so
when
the
female
is
have already
dis-
appeared.
necessary,
therefore,
The Measure
tain
of the Hours
cer-
number of
the
and Sage
and
But
case
this
is
the
more general
is
is
entomophilous, that
relies
to say,
it
loves
insects
upon
it
their collaboration
it
alone.
Still, it is
knows
many
it is
things, that
world where
chari-
best to expect
It
no sympathy, no
useless
table aid.
fore,
in
making
the
The
kind and
is
in
How
matri-
unconsciously,
oflice?
to
fulfil
her
monial
Observe
the
wonderful
the back of
a
its
It distils
the bait.
But,
290
The
two
stand
somewhat
similar to the
Right at
the
When
order to reach the nectar she has to push the small sacks with her head. The two
stalks,
which turn on an
axis, at
once topple
down and
back and replace the mechanism in its first position; and all is ready to repeat the
fly
work
However,
play:
scene.
only the
is
first
half of the
in
the
sequel
enacted
another
The Measure
It issues
of the Hours
so as, in
tent.
its
turn,
On
its
way
head
of the bee passes freely under the hanging fork, which, however, grazes her back- and
sides exactly at the spots touched
by the
stamens.
The
two-cleft
;
stigma greedily
accomplished.
easy,
for
end of a match, to
set the
apparatus going
and
vellous combination
and precision of
movements.
The
Sage are very many and I they number about five hundred
varieties of the
will spare
tific
you the majority of their sciennames, which are not always pretty:
pratensis,
officinalis
Salvia
(our
,
Garden
Romeri,
aziirea,
292
Pitcheri,
splen-
The
and so on.
There
is
not, perhaps,
one but
which we have
just
examined.
A few and
this, I think, Is a
doubtful improvement
so that
it
not only
They
in the
it
same
hapthat
may
strict,
the insect, on leaving the flower, deposits on the stigma the pollen of the very anthers
Others with which the stigma cohabits. In the movement of the lever, make the anthers diverge farther apart so as to strike
Others,
lastly,
in
The Measure
mechanism.
I
find,
of the Hours
for instance, not far
from
my
under
flowers
tinted
with
pale
lilac
which
a lever.
promiscuously in the middle of tRe corolla. All seems left to chance and disorganised.
I
it
would be
possible,
to
whole
invention,
my
What
system
the
we
to
draw?
Is the
In the
experimental stage
among
aromatic tribe?
Has
It
''trial trips,"
Archimedean screw
Salntfoin family?
Has
294
the excellence of
The
mously admitted?
everything
established
;
Can
it
be,
then, that
Is
and are they still discussing and experimenting in this world which we believe to be fatally, organically regular ?^
*
any interference of wind or insects) a variety of which the floral mechanism has reached a high state of perfection with the pollen of a very backward variety ; and vice versa. My observations are not yet sufficiently numerous to permit me to give any details or
against
conclusions here.
if a general
Nevertheless,
it
already appears as
law were being evolved, namely that the backward Sage readily adopts the improvements of the more advanced variety, whereas the latter is not so This would prone to accept the defects of the first. tend to throw an interesting side-light upon the operations, the habits, the preferences, the tastes of nature at her best. But these experiments cannot possibly be
completed in so short a period, because of the time lost in collecting the different varieties, of the numberless proofs and It counter-proofs required and so on. would be premature, therefore, as yet to draw the slightest conclusion from them.
295
The Measure
of the Hours
XIII Be
may, the flower of most of the Sage presents an attractive
as
it
this
varieties
solution
fertilisation.
as,
among men,
new
fied.
invention
we may
many
A pretty
common Louse-
which you must surely have noticed in the shady parts of small woods and heaths, has
Introduced some extremely ingenious modifications.
The shape
of the
corolla
is
all
three
little
The
organs
even
in
thanks to an enactment quite different from that of the Sage, self-fertilisation is made
absolutely impossible.
The
anthers, in fact,
filled
juxtaposed
coincide
in
such a
way
and mutually
They
teeth.
gp farther than
this.
As Hermann
297
Miiller,
The Measure
who was
the
first
of the Hours
a complete study
to
make
am
mary)
is
as simple as
it
ingenious overcomes the difficulty. The lower lip of the corolla, instead of being symmetrical and horizontal, is irregular
and
by
slanting, so that
one side of
it is
higher
The
humble-bee resting upon it must herself necessarily stand In a sloping position. The
result
is
first
one and
stamens also takes place successively; and, one after the other, their orifices, now freed,
298
The
strike
fertilising dust.
fertilises
this
at the spot
after, to
where she
Is
about, the
moment
XIV
These instances might be multiplied
definitely;
InIts
it
every
flower has
its
Idea,
system,
turns
to
Its
advantage.
When we
examine
methods,
we
of ma-
The Measure
chines for
of the Hours
In
making machinery,
which the
Its re-
mechanical genius of
sources.
man
reveals all
But our mechanical genius dates from yesterday, whereas floral mechanism
has been at work for thousands of years.
When
the flowers
made
their appearance
upon our earth, there were no models around them which they could Imitate they
;
had
to derive everything
selves.
At
the period
club, the
bow and
the
flail
when we
It
was
pieces
weaving-loom, the Sage had contrived the uprights and counterweights of Its lever of
precision
its
sacks closed
up
as
though for
successive releasing of
combination of
Its
Inclined planes.
300
Who,
The
Maple
to use
When shall we
and
as
machine
When
shall
we
Broom?
As
for the
mentioned
study,
at the be-
who
shall tell
us the mystery of
miraculous strength?
It \s
enough
Its prickly
is
which resembles
a small cucumber,
vitality
it,
endowed with
energy.
inexplicable
and
You have
of
its
but to touch
it
at the
moment
maturity, and
301
suddenly
The Measure
quits
its
of the Hours
carries the
distance
is
from
The
action
as extraordi-
we were
to
spasmodic movement and in precipitating all our organs, our viscera and our blood to
a distance of half a mile
skeleton.
large
number of
seeds besides
ballistic
unknown
to
Remember, for instance, the explosions of the Colza and the Heath. But one of
great masters of vegetable
artillery
the
is
the Spurge.
The Spurge
is
an Euphor-
The
height of a man.
have a branch of
Spurge on
In a glass
my
table at this
It
moment
trifid,
steeped
of water.
has
greenish
berries,
seeds.
From
the
and the walls on every side. If one of them hits your face, you feel as
though you had been stung by an
so extraordinary
is
Insect,
these
pin's head.
Examine
that give
the
springs
life:
the
wonderful plant.
resentative
of
this
the Brooms.
Greedy of
303
poor, sober,
The Measure
robust, rejecting
of the Hours
soil,
no
no
trial,
It
forms
balls,
sometimes
May
and
with those of
Its
Honeysuckle, spread under the fury of a fierce sun delights that are not to be
described save by evoking celestial dews,
The
all
flower of this
Broom,
like that
of
and
Its
mens and
the bee
trable.
the
pistil.
So long as
It
it Is
It
not ripe,
who
But,
explores
as soon
finds
as
the
moment
Impeneof
and
The
and the
golden chamber bursts voluptuously, hurling with violence and afar, over the visitor,
over the flowers around, a cloud of lumi-
like
down upon
the stigma to
be impregnated.
XV
Let us leave the seeds and return to the
flowers.
As
have
said,
list
of their ingenious
I refer those
to study these
was the
in
Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen, to
analyse the functions of the different organs
in
the
Orchids; next,
30s
to
the
books of
The Measure
Charles Darwin, Dr.
of the Hours
Hermann
Miiller of
many
We
among
In
the
these writhing
and
eccentric
extreme
pierces
fire
For
not be allowed to
believe that
we have
Our
all
of Orchids,
Including
Darwin studied
The
in his
On
by which Orchids are fertilised by Insects, which Is the wonderful history of the most
heroic efforts of the soul of the flower.
It Is
should here, In
few
lines,
f alrylike
we
necessary that
we should
give
XVI
It
Is
mechanism of
The Measure
of the Hours
rostel-
with botany.
Let us take one of the most widely distributed Orchids in our regions, the
Orchis maculata, for instance, or rather,
because
it
is
little
more
the
Marsh
Orchid, commonly
It
is
known
as the
Meadow-rocket.
a perennial plant
and grows
It
is
common in the woods and damp meadows and it bears a thyrse of little
fairly
pink flowers which blossom in May and The typical flower of our Orchids June.
represents pretty closely the fantastic and
yawning mouth of a Chinese dragon. The lower lip, which is very long and which
hangs
in
The
insect.
The upper
lip
more or
which,
awaits
at the
end of a
become
irrecog-
At
rises a third
dinary organ.
At
is
its
top,
it
carries a sort
of
little
of stoup, which
stoup
is
This
full
two
tiny balls
at
whence
issue
two short
stalks
laden
their
The Measure
lower
of the Hours
She lands on the
outspread to receive her, and, attracted by the scent of the nectar, seeks
It,
right at
But the passage Is purposely very narrow; and the Insect's head, as she
the back.
The
at once
tact
with the
visitor's
skull,
fasten to
It,
it
so
that,
when
ries
them away and, with them, the two stalks which rise from them and which
end
In the packets
of tied-up pollen.
We
a neighbouring flower.
mained
stiff,
with
The
would spring from the pollen mingling with pollen. But here the genius, the experience
and the foresight of the Orchid become apparent. The Orchid has minutely calculated
the time needed for the Insect to suck the
it
We have seen
that
Is,
under
small
is,
membranous
disc,
whose
only function
to contract
at the
causing them
curve
and describe an
This
is
the result
The two
horns of
now
The Measure
head, so that,
of the Hours
she enters the next
when
two welded
This
is
not
all
fore-
The
of the packet
were as powerfully
stalks
were
fixed
and remain
whole; and their destiny would be ended. This must not be; it is important that the chances of the pollen should not
in a single venture,
be exhausted
but rather
The
chemist to
boot and
distils
two
sorts of
gums
soon as
touches the
insect's
air,
horns to the
The
lenlfied,
work of
the stigma.
This
latter
is
just prehensile
enough
slightly to
Some of
It,
when
Have
No
a neglected detail:
among
others, to the
movement of
its
the
little
unmask
lower
may
We
curiously
combined
of
the
polllnic stalks
insect, as
The Measure
mon to
all
of the Hours
plants
made
quite recently
by
M.
serve
its
destroy
or
sterilise
all
any
foreign
pollen.
This
is
about
that
we
gins
XVII
I
have
just
this
moment
found,
in
an
which, for
it is
know
very rare in
It
it
no more
plant
In
existence.
314
Imagine a
The
as tall.
ill-favoured,
of a
The lower
and
assumed by a drowned
month's immersion
the
in
corpse
after
the river.
conjures
From,
whole,
which
up
the
idea of the
seems to blossom
ironical nightmares
Issues a
there
am
in
pointing to
and describing
It
this
nauseating
Orchid because
France,
self
is
Is
fairly
common
easily recognised
very well,
The Measure
the distinctness of
its
of the Hours
organs, to any experiments that one might wish to make. We have only, in fact, to introduce the tip of
a
match
and
to
push
it
carefully to the
in order,
Grazed
in passing, the
pouch
little
As
soon as
end of
two
cells
the match
withdrawn,
stiff,
its
tip
is
firmly
diverging
horns,
two golden
latifolia,
balls.
Unfortunately,
we do
the
Orchis
spectacle offered
Inclination
We
316
have but to
in-
The
bouring
that
this
movement would be superfluous, the flower being much larger than that of the Orchis
maculata or
latifolia
arranged
in
such a
way
that,
when
the
with the pollen-masses enters It, they just reach the level of the stigma to be fertilised.
insect laden
It
Is
Important to the
that
is
quite ripe.
is
We
the flower
and the
when
all its
apparatus
Is
XVIII
This
isation
is
fertil-
But each
and
The Measure
improves the
of the Hours
with
Its
details In accordance
The
Orchis
or
Anacamptis Is one of
Its
lower
or labellum two
little
compel her to accomplish exactly what Is expected of her. Darwin very justly compares this Ingenious accessory with the
little
eye of a needle.
Here
Is
another
Inter-
Improvement: the two little balls that carry the pollen-stalks and soak in the
esting
stoup
disc,
are
replaced
by
single
If,
viscid
shaped
like a saddle.
following
we
we very
plainly per-
and
more
practical arrangement.
As
Is
the bristle
ruptured In
The
formed
which
at
once
becomes
the
attached to
bristle
the
bristle.
Withdraw
two
flaps inwards, so as to
it.
embrace the
of
The purpose
all,
movement
is
to enIn
the
Orchis
of the pollen-stalks.
As soon
as the saddle
drawn apart by
same manner
as In the
Orchid which
we have
already studied.
The Measure
of the Hours
XIX
Is
it
of
trifles,
retouches, that
human
Inventions proceed?
We have all.
In the latest
of our mechanical
improvements
would
really
to
They have the same laws, the same disillusions, the same slow
same unknown.
and
diflicult
triumphs.
our
self-love, the
fied Intelligence,
They
Their Inventive
The
imagination
same
prudent and minute methods, the same tiring, narrow and winding little paths: it
also has unexpected leaps
suddenly
ery.
fix definitely
It is thus that a
ventors
rich
among
and
altered a
number of
it
appeared to
has
too primitive.
is
absolute
each
particular flower.
linium,
longer dips
gum,
any
that
is
to
fix it
on the
insect's
head.
It is
of
cell.
Nothing
Nor have
like the
the
com-
The Measure
mon
if
of the Hours
the visitor
a guided
you wish, but nevertheless a contingent movement. No, the insect no longer enters
a flower
anism
sensitive flower.
upon the magnificent outer court of coppercoloured silk before long and nervous feelers,
the
cell is
mass,
held
Is
captive on
Abruptly
it
In consequence
of a curious
always flung
and
whom
It
adheres.
She,
322
stunned by the
The
This
is all
XX
Shall I describe also the curious and practical simplifications
eral system
bear
in
mind
the
circumvolutions of
human
inventions:
we have
ing counter-proof.
fitter, in
we tried to do just the opposite? Suppose we reversed the movement, suppose we inverted the mixture of the fluids?" The experiment is tried; and suddenly
^'Suppose
One
The Measure
to
of the Hours
themselves.
We
its
all
know
the Cypripedium,
or Ladies'-slipper: with
its
enormous shoeair,
shaped
it is
chin,
our
The
all
Cypri-
the com-
and
delicate
apparatus
of
the
gums and
the
and
compel the insect to pass its proboscis over two little heaps of pollen. But this is not the important point: the
as to
manner
wholly unexpected and abnormal thing is that, contrary to what we have observed
in all the other species,
it is
no longer the
is
viscid,
but
the pollen
itself,
whose
grains, instead of
The
drawn
so glutinous that
into threads.
What
to be
new
ar-
rangement?
pollen carried
to
It
off
is
by the
insect
may
adhere
dispensed from
foreign pollen.
would demand
In the
useful-
same way, there are patents whose ness we do not grasp at once.
XXI
To
have done with
it
of
the Orchids,
words on an auxiliary organ that sets the whole mechanism going: I mean the nectary, which, for that matter,
object,
species,
ments as
and
32s
as varied as those
The Measure
of the Hours
is,
in prin-
that
opens
the
bottom of the
and
acts
more
It
or
less as a
and
into
other
insects
and which
is
turned
It
adapted to their
it is
their proboscis
We
to
already
know enough
as
of the fantastic
that here,
elsewhere
and
The
more readobservant
itself
their
inventive,
spirit
practical,
and groping
scope.
has given
free
One
fluid that
should harden quickly enough to stick the bundle of pollen to the insect's head, has
overcome the
difficulty
by delaying the
in the
visitor's proboscis as
long as possible
narrow passages leading to the nectar. The labyrinth which it has laid out is so complicated
that
Bauer,
Darwin's
skilful
and gave up the attempt to reproduce it. There are some which, starting on the
excellent principle that every simplification
and evidently
suc-
necessary to
327
The Measure
manner
that the guest
of the Hours
who
feasts
on them
must inevitably
in
pollen-machinery
movement?
XXII
But, without lingering over a thousand
very various
fairy stories
us end these
we
no longer know with exactly what sort of being we here have to do. The astounding
Orchid has contrived
this: Its
lower
lip
or
drops of almost pure water, secreted by two horns situated overhead, fall continually;
when
flows
this
bucket
is
half
full,
the water
gutter.
re-
away on one
side
by a spout or
is
very
markable
alarming,
In Itself;
I
but here
Is
where the
The
liquid
The
which
not nectar
attract the
and
is
in
it
no way intended to
has a
insects:
much more
delicate func-
strange flower.
The
above to walk into the trap. crescences are above the cup,
These
in a sort
ex-
of
chamber
access.
to
which two
The
the flower,
Hymenoptera,
others experienced a
the big
bee begins to nibble the savoury caruncles. If she were alone, she would go away
quietly,
which
is
But
The Measure
moves around
it.
of the Hours
life
that
knows
form an innumerable, greedy and busypeople, that they come out by thousands in
the sunny hours, that a perfume has but to
opening flower for them to hasten in a crowd to the banquet prepared under the
nuptial tent.
We
space
guests
is
scanty,
the
walls
slippery,
the
ill-mannered.
They
crowd
and
that one of
treacherous repast.
an unher
expected
bath,
conscientiously
wets
mense
her
efforts,
flight.
This
where the
astute flower
lies in
There
is
The
wide enough to allow of the passage of the insect, whose back touches first the
viscid
glands
of
the
pollen-masses
neighbouring flower, where the tragedy of the banquet, the hustling, the fall, the bath
is
Insects.
Nor
be pretended that
or
less
all
many more
:
romantic interpreta-
tions
and
scientifically
observed and
It
Is
Impossible
We
stands.
The Measure
This Incredible and
of the Hours
Is
efficacious artifice
It
the
more
surprising Inasmuch as
does not
Immediate and
It
the
But why, we
tastic
fan-
We
the
the
and
Do we know
growth?
thoroughly a
Its
ex-
and
Its
One watching
or Venus, as
us
from
the height of
Mars
we
the
air,
*'Why those
and
monstrous
when
332
It
were so easy to
The
XXIII
To
these
proofs of intelligence,
man's
somewhat
but
those
marvels remain
species,
eternally
the
its
same.
Each
It
them
years
we
we have been
observing
that
is
macrantha or the Catasetida perfect their trap this is all that we can say and it is
: ;
Have we
as
much
as
attempted
;
the
most
elementary
experi-
of
our
in
astonishing
bathing
if
Orchid might do
placed
in
a century's time,
different
surroundings,
333
among
The Measure
Insects to
of the Hours
was not accustomed?
to the
which
it
Besides, the
orders;
deceiv-
ing ourselves
modify
its
The
I
flowers
when
the
latter appeared, to
unexpected collaborators.
This geologi-
amid
all
that
which we do not know. Is enough to establish evolution; and does not this some-
after
all,
adapta-
progress?
would be
easy,
The
and
intelligent progress
clusively
human
Without
have devoted to
this subject in
The Life of
two or three
The
and
in
work
in the
open
air.
It
was the
a shelter in hollow
combs
is
to maintain the
es-
necessary heat.
It
not uncommon,
mild summers, to find them reverting to the tropical manners of their ancestors.^
^
had
just written
these lines,
in
Bouvier
made
communication
L. of
The Measure of
Another
tralia
the Hours
to
fact:
when transported
Aus-
or California,
summer
perpetual and
she will live
from day to day, content to gather the honey and pollen indispensable for the
day's
thoughtful
Science
in
{cf.
triumphing
over
the subject of
Paris,
the report of the 7th of May, 1906) on two nidifications in the open air observed
a
Sophora Japonica, the other in a latter, which hung from a small branch furnished with two almost contiguous forks, was the more remarkable of the two, because of its evident and intelligent adaptation to particularly diffichestnut-tree.
one in
The
cult circumstances.
M.
the 31st of May, 1906, "built consolidating pillars and resorted to really remarkable artifices of protection and ended by transforming the two forks of the chest-
An ingenious human nut-tree into a solid ceiling. being would certainly not have done so well. "To protect themselves against the rain, they had
installed fences, thickenings
and blinds
can have no idea of the perfection of the industry of the bees, except by observing the architecture of the
One
two
nidifications,
now
at th'^
Museum.'*
336
The
make
hereditary
she
will
cease
to
Biichner
mentions an analogous
proves
the
bees'
which also
to
adaptation
circum-
and
Bar-
in
where they find sugar In plenty during the whole year, will entirely abandon their visits to the flowers.
of the
refineries,
Let us us
English entomologists, Kirkby and Spence "Show us," said these, "a single case in
substituting clay
we
will
faculties."
Hardly had they expressed this somewhat arbitrary wish, when another naturalist,
Andrew
made of
The Measure
wax and
of the Hours
and em-
subployed only which found in abunstance, they prepared dance in the neighbourhood of their home.
Moreover,
in
when pollen is scarce, the bee-keeper has but to place a few handfuls of flour at their
disposal for
them
at once to
understand
What
have
matter of
mutatis mutandis,
my humble
experi-
wonderful evolutionary efforts ,of the numerous varieties of the Sage. And a curious study by Babinet on the
cereals tells us that certain plants,
ments
when
cli-
transported
far
from
338
their
habitual
The
new
circumstances and
exactly as the
bees do.
Asia,
Thus,
of
the
Africa
and
America,
where
kill it
it
at
It re-
mains always green, multiplies by the root and no longer bears ears or grains. When,
therefore,
from
its
original
and tropical
country,
it
came
it
to be acclimatised in our
its
icy regions,
habits
plication.
As Babinet
339
The Measure
of the Hours
XXIV
In any case, to destroy the objection* which
has caused
would be enough
to establish one
were
it
but for
But,
argument,
is
how
little
importance,
when
all
of the per-
or the birds
Suppose that we say, speaking of the Orchid and the bee alike, that it
!
is
what
tion
we have
do
is
The
upon
this
earth.
from
this point
of view that
the bees,
the
among others in which, outside human form, the proceedings and the
most
clearly mani-
we can undertake. It Is clear, after all that we have shown, that those tendencies, those
intellectual
methods must be
at least
as
Orchids as
In the
gregarious Hymenoptera,
of observation,
ease
stable
341
The Measure
of the Hours
XXV
Now
what do we observe, when we
the
perceive nature (or the general Intelligence or
work
In the
Orchid world?
It
Many
only In passing,
would
long study, ascertaining that her Idea of beauty, of gladness, her methods of attraction, her
aesthetic
we begin by
tastes
are
But no doubt
would be more
In fact,
very
uncertain whether
we have
ever Invented a
our
calling
upon
speak
The
not only of the tree considered in the forest, where it is one of the powers of the earth,
perhaps the chief source of our instincts, of our sense of the universe, but of the tree in
itself,
is
Among
ing
form the limpid hollow and perhaps the subsoil of happiness and calm of our
it,
whole
When
period,
man
when he
all
the
lux-
and the
men
can
They
upon
two or three
innocent, invariable
him
be true that an
The Measure
of the Hours
image can pass the threshold that separates our two worlds. For myself, I can imagine no paradise nor
did
cent
it
after-life,
however
splen-
magnifia certain
my own
any one of which affords to the passer-by a model of all the great move-
ments of necessary
resistance, of peaceful
silent
and of perseverance.
XXVI
But
I
am wandering
in-
when
she wishes to
be beautiful, to please, to delight and to prove herself happy, does almost what we
we her -treasures at our disI know that, speaking thus, I am posal. speaking a little like the bishop who was
should do had
344
The
made
big
but
it Is
difficult to
things
human
point
of view.
few signs or
did not
to
know
In order well
power of gladness and beauty, one must live In a part of the country where It reigns undivided, such as
judge of
the corner of Provence, between the Siagne
in
which
am
writing these
is
Here,
the sole
sovereign of the
and
valleys.
The
vide
mankind
and
ambrosia.
gay, which
The
is
The Measure
dance their rounds
year.
of the Hours
through the azure
all
Anemones,
Gilliflowers,
Mimosas,
autumn months.
the
hills to
tween dikes of Vines and Olive-trees, they flow on every side like a stream of petals
whence emerge the houses and the trees, a stream of the colour which we assign to
youth, health and joy.
The aroma,
but
at once
all
warm
and
refreshing,
above
The
carved
in the
substance of Eden.
one's
life,
For the
first
time in
vision of happiness.
346
The
XXVII
Still
add
to our
remark one a
more
haps big with consequences, namely, that the genius of the earth, which Is probably
that of the whole world, acts, In the vital
struggle, exactly as a
man would
act.
It
It attains its
employs the same methods, the same logic. aim by the same means that
use
:
we would
it
It
gropes.
It
hesitates,
It
it it
cor-
adds,
its
sup-
presses,
:as
errors,
we should do
efforts.
It
It
makes
and
the
great
little
by
little,
the
manner of
workmen and
heavy,
It
It
Its
being.
Is
The Measure
going;
It
it
of the Hours
one
which, nevertheless,
we
distinguish
more
and
spiritit
Materially,
it
dis-
poses of
Infinite
resources,
knows the
which we
It
secret of prodigious
forces of
know nothing
strictly to
appears occupy our sphere: we cannot prove that, hitherto, it has exceeded Its lim;
but. Intellectually,
its;
and.
If It
not
mean
It
that there
Is
nothing beyond
It?
Does
not
mean
the
is
whom
pass,
In
whom
are
voli-
of the universe?
348
The
XXVIII
The
emerge
Plato's
I
touchstones
slowly,
of
our
consciousness
grudgingly.
is
Perhaps
sufficient
:
famous
figure
no longer
mean
it
thrown
we
tried to substitute a
its
new and
would be
more
exact image in
place, this
Suppose Plato's
No
With
been imprisoned in it from their birth. They would not regret the light, having never seen it; they would not be blind,
would not be dead, but, having nothing to look at, would probably become the most sensitive organ of touch.
their eyes
The Measure
darkness,
in
of the Hours
of
unknown
What
tions
viations,
what astounding
!
misinterpreta-
But how touching and often how ingenious would seem the
make of
things that
had not been created for employment in the dark How often would they guess aright ?
I
And how
faction
if,
accommodated
And
in
and
is
number of those
their
The
mistakes
are countless.
Since
we
live In a
cave of this
sort, is it
power
which has placed us there acts often and on some Important points even as we act ourselves?
In
Here we have
a glimpse of light
XXIX
and marvellously Incidental beings, probably fallen from another world, devoid
of any certain
In
ties
life
and.
in-
any
case,
greatly
for
we
The Measure
to disappear in the
of the Hours
normal evolution of
consoling to ob-
nature.
It
is
much more
serve that
we
we have
the
same
and
ideas, the
^were
it
same hopes, the same trials not for our specific dream
the
same
feelings.
It
much more
we employ methods
which
order
it
uses to
conquer,
enlighten and
its
unsubjected,
unconscious
and
other
unruly regions,
methods, that
we
home
in
and apposite
If nature
to our
own.
if
knew
everything,
she were
all
never mistaken,
if,
everywhere, in
352
her
The
first
impeccable, infallible,
things an intelligence
if
she revealed in
immeasurably superior to our own, then there would be cause to fear and to lose
courage.
We should
much
better to be con-
closely akin to
our own.
Our
intelligence
same reserve
We
we
are almost
We
which
it is
our business to
and
to direct
XXX
It
would
not, I imagine,
be very bold to
less
The Measure
of the Hours
it
bad conductors of the understanding. Man would then represent, until now, upon this
earth, the
mode
of
life
called divine.
Our
would spread.
in
The
circumvolutions
But these are mysteries which it were somewhat idle to question, seeing that we
do not yet possess the organ that could gather their reply. Let us be satisfied with
354
The
All that
we observe
to
suitor
within ourselves
is
rightly
open
suspicion:
we
are
at
and we have too great an interest in peopling our world with magnificent illusions
and hopes.
But
let
compared with what the mountains, the sea and the stars would tell us, could we surprise the secrets of their life.
Nevertheless,
confiall
spirit
which animates
is
things or emanates
from them
of the
same essence
bodies.
as that
we
is
thus resemble
if
all
that
it
contains
If
It
em-
The Measure
for better things,
is
of the Hours
it
illogical for us to
hope
all
that
we do hope,
it is
instinctively, in-
hopes the
same ?
Is
it
find scattered
through
life so
make no work of
intelligence, that
to say,
which we
but
Its
which
face or
is
its
own
sleep ?
356
PERFUMES
PERFUMES
AFTER
natural that
soul,
will
seem
their
we should
is
say a
word of
which
their
nately, here, as in
man,
the unknowable.
We
unacquainted with the purpose of that zone of festive and invisibly magnificent air which
the corollas shed around themselves.
is,
There
serves
first
in fact, a great
doubt whether
it
In the
place,
many among
of the butterfly or
The Measure
the bee
is
of the Hours
to
them
a matter of Indifference
or Inconvenience.
tracts the Insects
Is
at-
and the
have no percepsee
odour.
And
thus
we
them neglect
to besiege In
whose aroma
is,
in a
manner of
not yet
speaking, null.
Let
we do
tell
know
what
we cannot
Is
why we
all
Indeed, of
our
our animal
exist-
ence.
of
smell
also
Important
servile functions.
It Is the
keeper of the
360
Perfumes
air
we breathe,
watches carefully over the quality of the food offered for our consumption, any disagreeable emanation revealing the presence
But behas
an-
practical
mission
it
Perfumes are
When
too vio-
may
even become
detrimental to
it.
Nevertheless,
we
possess
con-
sideration.
fair secret.
in
We
which
adorn one
Is
of necessity's snares.
Our
361
scent
the only
The Measure
us.
of the Hours
Wherefore
it
Is
it
an apis
our
civilisation.
The
ancients interested
more
solid scents, so
and the
is
very seldom
mentioned
of
our peasants, even at their longest periods leisure, dream of smelling a violet or a
rose?
And
cities
is
not
this,
the very
first
great
is,
who
perceives a flower ?
There
therefore,
the last-born of
is
Perfumes
not "in course of retrogression," to use the
biologists.
This
a reason for
it
making
it
tioning
and cultivating
surprises
if
possibilities.
it
which
would
for
It
store
for us
it
equalled,
our
sight, as
much by
unexplored world. This mysterious sense, which, at first sight, appears almost foreign to our organism,
becomes,
perhaps,
We
have
here
an
when more
not, above
carefully
It
most
Are we
all things,
most absolutely and promptly Indispensable element; and is not our smell just the one
sense that perceives
some parts of
It
it ?
Perlife-
do not adorn
without good
if this
It
luxury
The Measure of
the Hours
which we do not understand corresponded with something very profound and very
essential
and
rather, as
Is
we have
seen, with
something that
very
Is
turned
towards
the
future,
is
already
of matter that
for us.
is
reserving
many
surprises
Meanwhile,
it
more
Hardly does
so
much
as
atmosphere and the light. As we are on the point of distinguishing those of the rain
and the
twilight,
of snow, of
ice,
Perfumes
fruits
stars
perfume, even a
Inconceivable,
space:
moonbeam,
II
life
has
brought me back lately to the spot where almost all the perfumes of Europe are born
and elaborated.
It
Is,
In point
of
fact, as
In
the
sun-swept and
to
balmy region
Nice that the
stretching
last hills
from Cannes
and the
last valleys
In exactly
do the painted woods and plains of a theatre to the woods and plains of the real country.
Here
the labourer's
work
Is
ruled by a
365
The Measure
May
and
of the Hours
two adorable queens hold sway: the rose and the jasmine. Around these two sovereigns of the year, one the
July,
December,
the
violets,
spices,
the Im-
lavender,
the
Spanish
broom, the too-potent tuberose and the acacia that resembles an orange caterpillar.
It
is,
at
first,
not a
little
disconcerting to
rustics,
and heavy
whom
seri-
taking flowers so
ments of the earth, performing a task fit for a princess or a bee and bending under
a weight of violets or jonquils.
366
But the
Perfumes
most striking Impression
roses or the jasmine.
Is
that of certain
though the
atmosphere
of
the
earth
It
had suddenly
changed, as though
that of an Infinitely
perfumes are not, as here, fleeting, vague and precarious, but stable, spacious, full, permanent, generous, normal and inalienable.
Ill
Many
drawn
have
like a sunlit
upon
a mountain-side.
They have
literally
wade through
3^7
the
less
The Measure of
the Hours
women
carry nobly on their heads. Lastly, described the different processes have they whereby the flowers, each according to its
character, are forced to yield to the crystal
We
know
that
stance, are
give up their
aroma with
simplicity.
They
steam
is
made
to pass. Little by
little,
their
essential oil,
more
costly than a
jelly
of
pearls, oozes
drop by drop into a glass tube, no wider than a goose-quill at the bottom
still,
of the monstrous
which resembles
to a
wake of
368
so
many
others,
Perfumes
speak here of the
inflicted
infinitely
varied tortures
upon them
to force
them
at length
to surrender the treasure which they desperately hide in the depth of their corollas.
I will
rest.
The
and almost
the soul of
wound
an idea
some of the
pangs of the enfleurage which certain flowers are made to endure before they break
silence.
The
cold enfleurage
is
practised
only upon
may menfat
The
of cold
and the
torture of
has to be superadded. The lard, therefore, is heated in the water-bath until it approaches In consequence of this barbarous treatboiling-point.
ment, which
recalls
that inflicted
upon the
coiners of
369
The Measure
mine
IS
of the Hours
of the jas-
the only one that Is Inimitable, the that cannot be obtained by a one only The cunning mixture, of other odours.
torturer coats large plates of glass with
and spreads on
sult
this
As
the re-
None
can
more
to lose.
away
as rubbish
new
In-
These
the middle ages, the modest and fragrant flowers that deck the roads in spring gradually lose the strength to keep their secret. They yield, they surrender, and their liquid executioner is not satiated until it has
own weight in petals, which be prolonged throughout the season in which the violets blossom under the olive-trees.
absorbed four times
causes the torture
its
to
370
Perfumes
and undergo the same fate others and yet others follow them and it is not until the
;
;
is
after devouring
further victims.
It
of making the
energy,
to
wan
miser disgorge
the
for the
retain
absorbed treasure.
difficulty.
its
This
is
achieved,
not without
The
which are
is
un-
doing.
intoxi-
hold.
The
now
it
No
to
It
sooner has
it
the secrets in
its
custody than
them
itself alone.
attacked in
its
these adventures,
Is
at last gath-
'^
/-f\
BERKELEY
Return
This book
is
to desk
DEC
231947
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30Nov'63J5
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MAR
5
1957
LD
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