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 THE PRESENT DUTY, BY PAUL DESJAR- 
 
 DINS: TRANSLATED FROM THE 
 FRENCH BY E. N. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 HORACE L. TRAUBEL 
 
 1893 
 

 Copyright, /8pj 
 Horace L. Traubel 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 Billstein & Son, Printers 
 
THE PRESENT DUTY. 
 
 There are many people who can sometimes forget their own 
 troubles, however great these may be, in remembering the 
 moral distress of the world and in meditating a possible 
 remedy for universal suffering. There are some who can re- 
 main calm before the spectacle, resigning themselves to a con- 
 dition of hopeless evil and inextricable doubt. Others — and 
 such is he who now speaks to you — are more aggressive, 
 because they are more susceptible, or perhaps more deeply 
 wounded ; they know neither how to forget nor how to be patient 
 nor how to despair ; they are less concerned with what is than 
 with what ought to be. Nay, they deliberately turn to what 
 ought to be as the salvation for which the hearts of men are 
 crying. It is their weakness to be unable to interest themselves 
 for long in anything which does not wear the aspect of duty. 
 They do not claim that it is a mark of strength to be unable to 
 look with an untroubled eye on physical or spiritual disease, or 
 to desire to busy themselves, even if vainly, at the bedside of the 
 dying, and to still the anguish of their own hearts by devising 
 remedies, even at the supreme moment, in the chamber of 
 death. But it is from this inability to remain inactive in the pres- 
 ence of misery that these lines have sprung ; and the same rea- 
 son explains why I cannot feel myself exempt from sending 
 them into the world, believing that they may be of use. 
 
 I. 
 We are living in a state of warfare. To be silent concerning 
 our deepest beliefs, when they are disputed and attacked, is to 
 be a coward. Nor must we be lulled into false peace by a seem- 
 ing truce which invites us to yield our intelligence with facile 
 compliance to ideas the opposite of our convictions. On the 
 
2 The Present Duty 
 
 contrary, we must draw our ranks closer and form in order. 
 Between us and many of our contemporaries there is to-day an 
 irreconcilable difference, a quarrel in which we are obliged to 
 take up arms. 
 
 This is the situation, as I conceive it : 
 
 Subservience to the animal instincts, egotism, falsity — are 
 these really evils, or only " inelegancies " ? — things, that is, 
 discredited for the moment, but which, gracefully and skillfully 
 ordered, may yet wear a smiling front and satisfy the soul ? 
 Since there is nothing to convince us that the one is higher than 
 the other, do these afford us a standard of living equivalent to 
 that of saints and sages ? Are justice and love the supreme law 
 and the saving reality, or are they possibly illusions and prob- 
 ably in vain ? Have we a destiny, an ideal, a duty, or are we 
 aimlessly and causelessly spun through time for the amusement 
 of some malicious demiurge, or by the caprices of the great 
 god Pan ? Here are the questions which divide consciences. 
 
 A great contention, truly— greater than that concerning the 
 divinity of Jesus Christ, for example, or the existence of a per- 
 sonal God, or any other speculative theory. More urgent, also, 
 since it entails consequences which affect me, bound as I am to 
 existence from the hour when my eyes open to the light to that 
 other when they shall close upon it. For according to the an- 
 swer I make my soul upon these points, will my little garden- 
 plot of time be sown and reaped. 
 
 After reflection and experience, I have answered them for 
 myself. I avow my profound conviction that humanity has 
 a destiny, that we are not here for nothing, that we are living 
 for an end. But what do we mean by this word humanity? 
 I cannot define it, but I know that humanity does not yet exist — 
 that it is on the way to existence— and that in this, I, who do exist, 
 am deeply concerned. What are we to understand by destiny ? 
 This is not much clearer ; it is hardly more than a dream as 
 yet— a dream born of a deep, incommunicable love to which 
 only an equal love can respond ; my heart is not pure enough 
 to have conceived a certainty. But I affirm that this destiny 
 of humanity, if it were known, would be such that all men, 
 gentle and simple, would have a part in it, and that it must be 
 achieved by the sole instrument at all men's disposal — by good- 
 will. To know this is somewhat ; to discern, if only by glimpses, 
 
The Present Duty 3 
 
 the direction whence the light cometh, and to struggle toward 
 it. It is as if one were toiling through a gloomy, tangled forest 
 toward a radiant point which cannot be wholly hid, however 
 the importunities of our complex and pressing life may obscure 
 it. The way to approach it is not to reason on the probable 
 nature of the light, but to press forward ; in other words, to 
 strengthen in myself and in all my fellows a good will. 
 
 There are plenty of young people journeying this same way, 
 who would be sincerely glad to share this faith of which I speak. 
 But they hesitate ; their education, wholly classic, still inclines 
 them ceaselessly in other directions — toward a generalized em- 
 piricism called science, or toward the " grand style " and literary 
 dilettanteism. They cannot make up their minds to cast aside 
 this artificial education, as I have been compelled to do, forced 
 to it by the needs of the present time. On the other hand, the 
 Christianity lurking in their very marrow works unconsciously 
 within them. They turn doubtfully toward us, but halt mid- 
 way. 
 
 And there are, besides, contemporaries of ours who believe 
 precisely the contrary of this. They do not believe that man 
 has a destiny, or that there is for him a duty or a goal. 
 
 Thus, we have on the one side allies irresolute or lukewarm ; 
 on the other open adversaries, with a conflict forced upon us. 
 Day by day this conflict becomes more evident. It is what, in 
 a recent book,* M. Edouard Rod calls " the antagonism between 
 negalives and positives ; between those who tend to destroy 
 and those who tend to construct." You may choose other 
 terms ; the idea is perfectly clear. 
 
 Here, for example, is what Renan says : "We may place our 
 whole greatness in this obstinate affirmation (of duty) even 
 against the evidence for it ; we shall do well to do so. But 
 there are almost as many chances against its truth as for it." 
 It is by such words, dropped lightly here and there, that this 
 exquisite dreamer, if he be taken seriously (and even more if 
 he be not so taken), brings into suspicion, and finally into dis- 
 credit, a belief which one may hold or not, but which is cer- 
 tainly our only guide for living like rational beings. Here is 
 no question, be it understood, of mistaking one or another 
 particular obligation ; that point I yield at once, having always 
 
 * " Les Idees Morales." 
 
4 The Present Duly 
 
 felt that our moral judgments as well as our actions ought to 
 be endlessly revised and corrected, following a progression 
 without term. It involves much more than this — to wit, an 
 acknowledgment of duty per se. Certainly, M. Renan nowhere 
 explicitly denies the moral conscience, hut he does continually 
 deny that it can be indubitably proclaimed, which, after all, is 
 the same conclusion. The right thing, in short, is the thing 
 we are bound to do. Like Christ, who, according to St. Paul, 
 is not " the yes and the no," but the " yes," duty is the " yes." 
 To allow the smallest possibility of a "no "would be to 
 destroy duty. In his most recent attitude, M. Renan may be 
 fairly called a "negative." 
 
 Now let us listen to Count Tolstoi : " The life of man is a 
 striving toward good ; that toward which he strives is given 
 him ; life cannot be death, good cannot be evil." . By such ex- 
 pressions, which he repeats, restates, reaffirms, emphasizes, the 
 rude apostle strengthens in us our vacillating belief in the 
 existence of a law of life. He may be called a " positive." 
 
 The men of our time may all be divided into "negatives " 
 and "positives " as they incline toward one or the other of 
 these attitudes. And to one or the other they must incline. Is 
 our life in vain? This question forces itself on every one 
 who opens his lips to speak or moves his hand to act ; nay, on 
 every being who draws a conscious breath. I agree that there 
 are many who never speak of it, who never think of it, whose 
 life speaks for them, and with no uncertain voice. 
 
 I confess that at first sight it seems as if the "negatives " 
 were for the moment in the majority. They form part of many 
 groups of men which I will not enumerate in detail. Among 
 them must be included charming visionaries like M. Renan 
 and his disciples ; melancholy doubters like those to whom M. 
 Leconte de Lisle lends the void of his sounding cymbals ; all 
 those whose shibboleth is the commonplaces " empty illusions " 
 and " puppets ;" logical skeptics like Edouard Scherer (rare 
 enough, these) ; empiricists or physicists absorbed in the play 
 of blind forces ; Darwin once ; Biard to-day, with other follow- 
 ers of Darwin, among the savants ; Taine, among the theorists ; 
 Zola, among the artists ; with the innumerable echoes of these 
 voices whose mingled sound drowns our own. Last, let me 
 mention the rank and file of this host, for whom the law of 
 
The Present Duty 5 
 
 man's fulfillment of right is a mere chimera, since their whole 
 life is its negation. I mean the multitude whose existence is 
 aimless— rwho are good-tempered, easy-going, scrupulous not 
 to offend perhaps, by temperament, by love of approbation or 
 by indolence, but who live in a complete moral anaesthesia. Un- 
 questionably this yielding human clay furnishes but weak allies 
 to the illustrious artists, savants, thinkers, of whom I have 
 spoken, but allies they are nevertheless. I acknowledge that 
 they are not at the same point of development. They cannot 
 express themselves with the same consummate elegance, they 
 transpose but grossly the Gaudeamus of the leaders ; but the 
 difference is one of esthetics, not of morals. Their most emi- 
 nent thinkers have no serious argument to constrain these quasi- 
 animals to a different order of life. On the contrary, have they 
 not legitimatized instinct, nature's conquest of undisciplined 
 man ? M. Renan himself repeats more than once : "After all, 
 are not the children of nature {les naifs) in the right?" We 
 must confess the solidarity of all these, and count them to- 
 gether as " negatives." 
 
 And now for the "positives." They include, first, all Chris- 
 tians and all Jews truly imbued with the spirit of their religions ; 
 then all philosophers and poets who affirm or sing a moral 
 ideal ; new disciples of Plato, of the Stoics, of Kant — such as 
 M. Charles Secr£tan, M. Renouvier ; such also as M. Lachelier, 
 M. FouilI6e, M. Sully-Prudhomme. Closely allied with these 
 belong those whose life itself, all theory aside, is an affirmation 
 of the possibility and the sufficiency of goodness. The conduct 
 of these men and women, thus in act of creating themselves as 
 free creatures, as human beings, has the force of a doctrine. 
 Each labors in his own place, striving by his own right-doing 
 to realize the absolute righteousness in which he believes ; de- 
 voted ministers of something outside of themselves, whether 
 it be city, religion, charity, justice, truth or beauty conceived 
 as a mode of worship. Whether they are soldiers or explorers 
 who flock to Africa to immolate themselves in ever-greater 
 numbers, whether they are teachers organizing their work in 
 the interests of social peace or national elevation, or whether 
 they are without function and without name, humble enthusi- 
 asts devoting themselves to an obscure life of sacrifice, their 
 deeds speak for them. "This must be done," they seem to 
 
6 The Present Duty 
 
 cry out, " and this ! There is no doubt that this work is set 
 for us to do." These form, it seems to me, one single church 
 having the poets and thinkers for elders, the heroes of duty for 
 the flock. We may call them by a general name, the " posi- 
 tives." 
 
 Now,. many believe that during the last decade in France the 
 11 positives " have been increasing and the "negatives" decreas- 
 ing in numbers. There is much competent testimony to this 
 belief, and to-day it is in the ascendant. I should like to show 
 clearly the signs of change, and why they are to be trusted. 
 This is the first of the two points I propose to touch. 
 
 But whether the cause of the " positives " be recognized as 
 the stronger or the weaker, whether the future has failure or 
 success in store for it, we have made it our own. Not for the 
 sake of success but of truth have we embraced it. We, then, 
 who stand for an aim in life and in humanity, are free to speak 
 with no uncertain voice at this moment, for we need to make 
 our position clear to our allies, conscious and unconscious, to 
 our opponents, perhaps also to ourselves. This will be my sec- 
 ond point. 
 
 To define the moral ideals prevalent to-day does not involve 
 a history of the manners of our time. The question, " How do 
 we live ?" if we are inquiring about states of conscience, wouid 
 bring a misleading answer, since we are better than our lives. 
 It would be hard to be judged by the poor reality of our ac- 
 complishment rather than by our effort; it would, moreover, 
 be unjust. Not every action of my day bears witness to my 
 personal idea of duty, but only those which meet my own 
 approval, satisfy my own craving — those, perhaps, which are not 
 enough to fill the hollow of my hand. 
 
 Generally speaking, we do approve but little of our own con- 
 duct, and we are not our own ideals. Therefore it is not necessary 
 under pretext of enumerating our ideas of morality to describe 
 our own departure from them. I content myself by briefly re- 
 calling them, lest it be said that, turned obstinately toward the 
 longed-for dawn, we have not courage to face the night. 
 
 Assuredly, to the onlooker, the " negatives " seem to carry 
 the day without hope of reversal : a taste for duty seems de- 
 
The Present Duty 7 
 
 cidedly of the past. Turn our eyes where we may, all sur- 
 roundings seem vitiated. Even among the children at play in 
 our streets there are many blotched and sickly little faces, 
 many rickety little frames, which attest the degeneration of 
 their parents. At every corner are sold the libertine produc- 
 tions which enable some wretches to live by the degradation of 
 those more wretched still. If one would know what flame of 
 vice burns in our midst, let him but observe how the eyes of 
 men, even of old men, dwell on the women who pass. What 
 bestial glances have we not intercepted under the fevered glare 
 of the electric lights ! what strainings, what convulsions of 
 desire! what madness of pleasure or of gold ! 
 
 Here is abundant material for tragedy, truly, but for the base 
 tragedies of Balzac, not for such as are played by heroes under 
 the open sky. An occasional pistol-shot, a case of poisoning, 
 another of drowning — these are the only manifest signs of the 
 misery within. The rest is stifled tears, brooding hatred, tol- 
 erated shame. 
 
 In such a distracted state of things conscience, even among 
 good men, loses its clear ring. "What you are laughing at is 
 an ignominy," I said to my friend. He was indignant at first; 
 on reflection he agreed with me. He had not seen it. The 
 vision of honest men is troubled by an encompassing corrup- 
 tion ; and this is as it should be, for we are truly one body, 
 whose members are distinguished from one another by more 
 or less cleanliness, education, refinement, but not by princi- 
 ples. From top to bottom society at present lives by sensa- 
 tion : that is its common trait, and it divides according to the 
 quality of its sensations. For its grossest members, the grati- 
 fication of drink or the sensual enjoyments which to day are 
 called love ; for over-stimulated and enfeebled organisms, 
 the intoxication' of the gaming-table or of morphine ; for the 
 refined and cultivated classes, sounds, perfumes, delicate 
 colors, beautiful furniture, well-chosen words, new metaphors, 
 strange foreign aspects ; finally, for the highest in the scale, it-is 
 the intellectual relish, the skillful manipulation of the idea — it 
 is a new mysticism, an ecstasy full of pride. These latter are 
 by comparison great, the noblesse of the whole. But at the 
 bottom it is only sensation playing on nerves unequally sensi- 
 tive. Now, there are no two terms more inconvertible than 
 
8 The Present Duty 
 
 the Pursuit of Sensation and Moral Obligation— no two more 
 diametrically opposite. He who depends wholly upon sensa- 
 tion, depends wholly upon the fortuitous and transitory tilings 
 of life ; he is no longer a fixed center, a responsible being. 
 His personality dissolves, evaporates ; he is incapable of 
 reaction, and nature claims him as a lifeless thing. 
 
 It is true that this failure to react may pass for tolerance, for 
 an easy good-humor; although in fact the nerve of well-doing 
 is relaxed with that of ill-doing. This good-nature is common 
 enough, while the three virile virtues, Mastery of Self, Purity, 
 Justice, are becoming rare, and we prize them as something 
 foreign to us. To stimulate the passive element only, to make 
 it a mark of aristocracy and an ideal, is to develop inversely to 
 ourselves, inversely to humanity. Yet this is what we are 
 doing. 
 
 I recognize the evil, I see it to its full extent, and still, let me 
 repeat, this lamentable picture is not the true representation of 
 our moral ideas. Our moral ideas are those which we hold 
 concerning a life which would be the best for us, a life which is 
 now exactly ours. 
 
 Since Ovid's Medea uttered her famous cry, many a one in 
 turn has echoed it ; we see and we approve, alas ! the better ; 
 the worse we still pursue. One of the most vital consciences 
 of our day, Mme. Darmesteter, has said : " The great things 
 which I love I cannot do ; the small things which I do I cannot 
 love." The noble Channing wrote in a letter that the only 
 great sorrow of his life had been the immense discrepancy 
 between his conception and his practice of right. Truly, 
 Channing would suffer from this more than most of us be- 
 cause holiness seems further away the nearer we approach it. 
 But there are few of us who have not felt some sense of dis- 
 tance. Read the romances of Paul Bourget, charming and 
 ambiguous as they are ; look at any of the works of art pro- 
 duced with infinite pangs and effort in the midst of this vitiated 
 atmosphere. If we would judge of the distance between our 
 moral ideas and ourselves, we can measure it exactly by the 
 extent of our pain, which is our discontent with ourselves 
 carried to the verge of despair. 
 
 Deep and wide-spreading is this pain to-day ; wherever vice 
 abounds, sadness abounds also. It is no longer the melancholy 
 
The Prese?it Duty 9 
 
 born of recognizing tlie insufficiency of the external, which 
 Obermann experienced, but a bitterness mingled with con- 
 tempt and distrust, born of recognizing our own insufficiency. 
 Never, it seems to me, has the world been so generally iriste 
 as now. And this it is which saves us ; here I find our great- 
 ness. Only he is without hops who is at ease in doing evil ; 
 the untroubled conscience is the only one in danger. Let us 
 take heart, then, for it cannot be denied that we are far from at 
 peace. Evidently we are in travail with something that shall 
 work our cure. The symptoms of this painful labor are not 
 lacking. The works of art which appear at present, however 
 distinguished as to their form, yet indefinite and uncertain in 
 underlying principle, are like the restlessness out of which 
 they have grown ; very soon they cease to be even superficially 
 pleasing. In poetry, in fiction, in music and in painting, there 
 are exquisite productions, sprung not from power directed by 
 love, but from a dream of power, a dream of love, in a sad 
 exile from them both. 
 
 We have lost our relations to things ; when one of the old 
 misfortunes comes upon us — death, abandonment or loss — we 
 cannot face it as our ancestors did. The tranquillity of sorrow 
 is not known, but at an unlooked-for blow the rending of our 
 hearts shows that they have been weakened beforehand. We 
 are divided within when we should be at one with ourselves. 
 But unity within is possible only to the debauchee or the sage ; 
 no middle ground is tenable. It is half-virtue that torments 
 us, and it is necessary for our freedom from this torment that 
 one of the two warring portions shall be routed. Suppose we 
 choose the freedom of the debauchee. But how shall we enjoy 
 it when so many things importune us to return to virtue — the 
 books we have read, the things we have seen, the heroism of 
 our fathers ? If we turn our eyes from their beloved images, 
 our arms still stretch out to them involuntarily. Can we rid 
 ourselves of the remembrance that Marcus Aurelius, Sir 
 Thomas More, Vincent de Paul, have lived and that we have 
 loved them ? Forever they embitter our false joys. There re- 
 mains, then, the other inward unity— that of the sage, that 
 which allows us to remember everything and to adjust every- 
 thing to its own place. Alas, how difficult ! 
 
 This is our malady — that we feel ourselves lesser men than 
 
io The Present Duty 
 
 the men of sixty years ago. Humanity is suffering from an 
 arrested development. It is seeking strength, against itself if 
 need be, which will allow it to pursue those aims, misconceived 
 but not lost from sight, which continue to call to it with the 
 significant urgency of pain. This strength, which shall restore 
 it to unity, humanity seeks, in the name of pity, everywhere. 
 Wearied, it pauses, or turns now right, now left, smiting the 
 barren rock and imploring the living spring. 
 
 To know ourselves, then, let us not consult those observers 
 of our shame alone — Zola, the brothers Goncourt, M. Becque, 
 M. de Maupassant, M. Huysman ; let us not weigh our deeds 
 only, to determine the state of our conscience, for with the evil 
 that we do, the evil that we suffer must be put in the balance — 
 the implacable sadness of failure and exile of which I have 
 spoken. Thus we shall see that our moral ideal, though for- 
 gotten, has not perished. But does this mean that it has sur- 
 vived in our brains as pure theory, our lives being governed 
 by quite another plan ? Have we but elaborated in ourselves 
 an intellectual conception of duty independent of our practice, 
 as we accept scientific theories of the rotation of the earth or 
 the circulation of the blood ? Far from it. That would be 
 another error which I must seek to remove. 
 
 Moral ideas are above all things practical ; they are the pro- 
 gram of an actual task. Their fulfillment is to be put in prac- 
 tice ; and to achieve fulfillment they must lay hold upon the 
 emotions and the will. No logical sequence of formulas is 
 enough to bear witness to the morality of an epoch ; were it so, 
 all ages would be alike in significance and value, for formulated 
 morality is the same throughout human history. No modern 
 race has defended theft or adultery or lying ; we are still under 
 the rule of the decalogue, complicated, to be sure, by much 
 legal casuistry. But the ancient vetoes still keep their power. 
 What does change, with changing humanity from one age to 
 another, is the energy with which we proclaim them, the sacri- 
 fices we are willing to make for them. Energy — this is not 
 easy to compute, yet the only thing that really should be taken 
 into account. Moral ideas are, above all, forces, or, rather, they 
 are one sole force, the organic force of the soul, as in the acorn 
 there is an organic force which impels it to become an oak. We 
 must measure the intensity of this force in the men of to-day. 
 
The Present Duly n 
 
 Whatever we choose to call it — spark, breath, or soul— this 
 force which impels us to fashion ourselves after our ideal de- 
 serves study rather than any formulas To take an example, 
 it is clear that in antiquity the great dispute between the Stoics 
 and the Epicureans (pretty nearly the dispute of to-day) con- 
 cerned a spiritual difference between them ; in the detail of 
 formulas it would be easy to present every Stoic maxim side by 
 side with a corresponding maxim of the Epicureans. So, in 
 comparing Christianity with Stoicism and other ancient systems, 
 Ernest Havet, a sincere and eloquent man, has shown innu- 
 merable similarities between the Christian text and that of the 
 philosophers. But had he succeeded in deducing all Christian- 
 ity, trait by trait, from Plato and the Orphic mysteries, he yet 
 could not have bridged over the immense spiritual difference 
 between them — a difference perceptible by I know not what 
 deep-hidden but certain sense to every one. Finally, in our 
 own day, I suppose that from Leo Tolstoi and from the great 
 Darwin one would obtain exactly identical precepts of virtue, 
 although the spiritual difference between them is to the point 
 of mutual exclusion. In this great "nothing" which I call 
 soul consists the true mark of selection. " II faut avoir une 
 ame," says old Akim in "The Powers of Darkness" — "it is 
 necessary to possess a soul." 
 
 What this soul is we know, each one of us. The humblest 
 has felt, at certain moments, superior to himself— to his painfully 
 discarded animal self ; has felt himself, as it were, in love with 
 sacrifice— that is to say, in a new freedom. Who does not re- 
 call the efforts made in childhood to confess a fault graver than 
 ordinary, and the joy of the liberated conscience afterward ; 
 the delight of scampering about the garden in an ecstasy too 
 pure to spend itself in material activity ; the vision of a future 
 supremely bright not merely for one's self, but for all the world 
 near and afar linked in brotherhood ; the forgetfulness of time, 
 of all incompleteness, to such a point that it seemed as if one 
 must fly away to Paradise at that luminous hour when the foli- 
 age kindles in the last rays of sunset? And then on the morrow 
 life began again — dull, colorless, full of discontent as before. 
 Later on, in times of renunciation, we have known exalted 
 moments, when we have felt ourselves suddenly incapable of 
 evil and freed from its power. On the other hand, there are 
 
12 The Present Duty 
 
 days of irreproachable barren virtue ; we may have followed 
 the severest counsels of morality without an upward-leaping 
 heart. To abstain from evil is not to be delivered from it : he 
 alone is wholly "saved" whom heroism constantly inspires and 
 in whom love never sleeps. The spiritual life is always a 
 mystery, and I cannot put into words what each one of us has 
 felt. I do not know how there unfolds within us that sublime 
 state known and variously described by Socrates, Plato, Ploti- 
 nus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, 
 Tauler, the author of the "Imitation," Shelley, Emerson, Leo 
 Tolstoi— by all profoundly-feeling men. The theological hy- 
 pothesis of "grace" is not so groundless as it seems; but I 
 know that this state which is within the experience of every 
 one is alone deserving of the name of positive morality. He 
 who is not all love may be indeed a good man, but he is not 
 essentially and intrinsically moral. 
 
 Now, history shows us that what is true of individuals is 
 equally true of nations. They pass through moments of great 
 energy, when there is, so to speak, an afflux of soul. They 
 feel themselves thrilled by joy, and run about their garden, the 
 world, filled with a force which they cannot explain and which 
 refuses to spend itself in low activities. Their moral ideas are 
 formulated as they were yesterday, as they will be to-morrow ; 
 only the spirit, the vital air, is not the same. 
 
 To take one or two examples from our own history, I may 
 mention the great twelfth and thirteenth centuries, full of noble 
 characters. It was the era of two crusades : a people's lofty 
 victory, not so much over the Saracens as over natural egotism; 
 a marvellous incursion of poetry into the domain of fact. It 
 seemed, says Ruteboeuf, as if God himself came to seek his 
 own ; the Crusaders set out on their way with a high disdain of 
 all personal interests, eager to die rather than to return ; erat 
 desiderium mori priusquam ad propria reverlerentur. At the 
 same time, with cost and toil which they wished to make ex- 
 cessive, they began inconceivable cathedrals, basilicas sculpt- 
 ured to the very roof-tree by unknown artists, for God alone. 
 Unknown, too, the authorship of those grand epics which ex- 
 cited less notice then than the merest feuilleton to-day ; which 
 contained nothing base except to hold it up to scorn, and which 
 mingled inextricably the heroic and the actual. Poetry, which 
 
The Present Duty 13 
 
 is in fact heroism transposed to another key, responded so well 
 to this force of men's souls that it sprang up spontaneously. 
 Think of the story of Guillaume le Marshal, who felt on his 
 deathbed a desire to sing, when, being himself no longer able 
 to raise his voice, he bade his two daughters to do so, to pre- 
 pare and attune his soul to flight. Grand epoch ! to which I 
 will only add the short episode of Jeanne d'Arc in the fifteenth 
 century, and the beginning of this one, including the years 
 from 1792 to the supreme cry of Lamartine, " I die because I 
 cannot name what I adore." 
 
 The impulse is the same throughout : the great romantics 
 have in them the stuffof the great conquerors, and the soldiers 
 of our armies, as S6gur and Marbot have painted them for us, 
 with their gift of joyously escaping from a hard present by 
 the power of imagination, are true romantics. These were — I 
 might name more than these — the great moments of France, 
 when she counted for much, when she had more than virtue, 
 more than morality — a soul. 
 Dare we look for such moments to reappear ? I believe so. 
 You shrug your shoulders. How can we believe that the 
 society which I described just now, given over to debasing 
 pleasures, can find within itself the elements of safety? It is 
 true that there are the lower classes, " the people," as they are 
 called, who live by daily labor, and who form a great reserve. 
 In fact, I do place my hopes upon them ; yet how shall we 
 know what they really are ? For already the middle class, before 
 disappearing, has tainted the future of these with its unclean 
 hand — by speculation put within the reach of small means, by 
 racing and gambling, by libertine publications distributed at 
 the doors of every workshop, by hateful demagogism, by its 
 ridicule of every sacred or serious thing. What can we look for 
 from " the people " ? 
 
 Yet I am confident — I predict a near victory for the "posi- 
 tives." The chief reason I have for this hopefulness is the only 
 one I wish to urge — the moral and logical necessity that it should 
 be so. 
 
 Let us examine these great moments of history which I have 
 pointed out. Their sign and token is always a great hope, 
 effecting a great solidarity. The freeing of the Holy Sepulchre, 
 the expulsion of the English, the reconciliation of all mankind 
 
14 The Present Duly 
 
 in fraternity and justice — aims real or illusory, but always 
 causes, as we say — causes for action, and in different ages 
 under different names, always the same hope of which human- 
 ity will not be deprived. Let it have something to conquer, 
 something for which it must strive mightily, and it will be 
 moral ; for it seeks to grow, to be greater than it is. Under 
 the external pretext of a Holy Sepulchre or a Universal 
 Republic it is at bottom agitated only by the need of larger 
 accomplishment. When there is nothing to draw it upward it 
 settles back. To hope I have added solidarity — a sentiment 
 that accompanies every noble movement of the heart. Who- 
 ever does good feels himself no longer alone ; a high desire 
 becomes naturally the rallying-cry of a host, and is in itself a 
 power of association ; and, inversely, no noble association can 
 be formed which does not proclaim a moral creed, inarticulate 
 but binding. We call this by a splendid name — unanimity — 
 that is to say, one soul {une a me) among many men. 
 
 Clearly, hope and solidarity are renewing themselves in 
 France. It has been our bane since about 1840 to have no high 
 mission either as individuals or as a nation. The will, unem- 
 ployed, grows impotent ; then follows the downfall of every- 
 thing — dignity, responsibility, justice, love. Under the Second 
 Empire there were some fitful gleams, but after 1870 we were 
 enveloped in a national humiliation, forced to live from day to 
 day without ideals and without hope for the future. Thanks 
 to God, we are no longer thus. I do not mean our position in 
 Europe, improved as it is, but our spreading out into other 
 parts of the globe, is an event of infinite moral significance. 
 What was stagnant has begun to flow ; for this reason nothing 
 in literature has been so important as the simple Anglo-French 
 Convention of August 5, 1890, by which a vast empire was 
 allotted to us in Africa, provided that we should go to take it. 
 
 It was a hope that was sold to us ; not much more, but no 
 less. In view of our total lack of a quest, it would have been 
 almost as well for us if a planet in the skies had been pointed 
 out to us for conquest, could we have taken seriously such a 
 gift. Under certain conditions, the gift is greater as the hope 
 is remoter; and we have now two hundred years of difficulty 
 before us — that is to say, two hundred years of life. 
 
 I confess that our nation is not yet moved to its depths by 
 
The Present Duty 15 
 
 this, but let a bloody reverse to our armies occur, and volun- 
 teers will be in plenty — nay, they are already plenty. So far 
 everything has been done in Africa freely and voluntarily ; this 
 is why I point to that far-off country to prove our moral renew- 
 ing. How many officers have already asked leave to follow 
 Col. Archinard's successor ! Blood will be shed, women will 
 murmur barbarous names of which we have not even heard till 
 now, a new legend of suffering will be written, a new chivalry 
 will be born. And consequently, also, the virtues of guardian- 
 ship, of paternity, in the elder of the two countries thus brought 
 face to face, will be developed. 
 
 At our very door we have a great stimulant in the question 
 of Alsace-Lorraine. Our underlying motive is not to regain 
 the territory, although our neighbors affect to believe this ; we 
 are not looking to retake, but to deliver. We regard the ques- 
 tion from a higher standpoint than is supposed— as we should 
 regard it, for example, were we Americans. The question of 
 Alsace is for us a school of justice, as the question of Ireland 
 is a school of justice in English society. I know not how or 
 when it will be closed, but in the meantime it is open. I do 
 not believe there will ever be a government in France which 
 will assume to settle it by violence, but neither do I believe 
 that there will be one which will listen to proposals for dis- 
 armament before it is settled. So it is always before us, a 
 problem and a hope. 
 
 Within the past two years, then, there has been an awaken- 
 ing of the national life, and with it a sure and present hope. 
 The moral and religious life will infallibly awake in turn, for 
 this is the result of solidarity, as I shall try to show, arousing 
 hopes higher and remoter still, and these will in their turn ad- 
 vance by the simple effect of increasing activity ; for an ideal of 
 good is progressive. While we follow it it moves forward ; it 
 is simply the figurehead fixed to our own prow. The indis- 
 pensable condition is that we should ourselves be in motion. 
 Thank heaven, that is now true. We have accepted a repub- 
 lic, new laws, new perils to society ; we have accepted our- 
 selves, with our stimulating shortcomings. The future is full 
 of menace, but this very menace will force us to seek and to 
 embrace some high and certain help. It has always been so ; 
 the day when to act nobly exposes us to persecution is the 
 
1 6 The Present Duty 
 
 day which removes the last doubt as to our action. A thou- 
 sand undertakings invite us ; never have the words youth, the 
 future, the next century, been so continually on the tongues of 
 men. We begin to see the good aspects of affairs as .they as- 
 sume the shape of duties, and as the hour of trial approaches, 
 uncertainty is at an end. The forward movement is universal. 
 
 I have said that solidarity is evolved as hope is renewed. 
 This truth is perhaps the most manifest of all, in our present 
 condition ; it cannot be denied. 
 
 There is a growing belief that individualism has had its day, 
 that the pursuit of personal happiness is the root of all evil, 
 and slowly, gradually, we are turning away from it, not with- 
 out heart-rendings.* Our experience has been a bitter one ; is 
 not our modern pessimism the result of it? Our profound dis- 
 enchantment, our fierce renunciation of pleasures or ambitions, 
 our weariness of heart — what are they all but the result of 
 egotism, and wild, always unsatisfied, thirst for happiness ? 
 Asceticism, the root and soul of all great organizations, has 
 reappeared ; the natural effects follow. Wearied of consecra- 
 tion to self, we struggle to lose ourselves in the service of 
 something greater than self as the only possible relief. We 
 band together, we form ourselves into all kinds of associations, 
 to find some reason for living less unsatisfactory than our in- 
 dividual profit. Perhaps never since the establishment of the 
 monastic orders has there been such a fever for associations 
 throughout the world ; everywhere we find co-operative socie- 
 ties, leagues, unions of all sorts, to say nothing of church or- 
 ganizations. Everywhere we have to do with groups rather 
 than with single persons. The motive of this general move- 
 ment is an immense need of sympathy. On all sides men are 
 seeking companionship. Can I not agree in something with 
 my fellow who chances to pass? Quick! all is well. Let us 
 prolong the cordial moment and rejoice in it — we so conjure, for 
 a brief space, at least, the powers of darkness — let us remain to- 
 
 * Let us agree on definitions. Individualism has two meanings ; in the 
 sense in which Emerson, Carlyle, Browning, Ibsen, understand it, it is a 
 necessity, and we should seek to develop it in ourselves ; if we look upon 
 the individuality as an instrument, this ought to be strengthened, freed, 
 responsible. But the individual is not his own end ; personal happiness 
 cannot be the object of the universe nor of our own existence. It is in this 
 sense that individualism is a thing of the past. 
 
The Present Duty 17 
 
 gether. This is the magnet which draws men close and binds 
 them, and this is the power which makes solidarity a reality. 
 And inversely, as I have said, no group of persons can be held 
 together who do not have this common soul. Egotism is a dis- 
 integrating force. Form your leagues for more wages only, or 
 power, or comforts, and though you get what you desire, to- 
 morrow will see you at war among yourselves over the spoils. 
 No association can endure unless it be free from consideration 
 of private advantage ; and this is precisely why association is 
 so fine a thing : it serves as a scale of values in the history of 
 moral ideas. 
 
 The vastest association (leaving aside the Church) is that 
 which we have lately formed in France : I mean Democracy. 
 Begun before its time (in 1848), subjected for twenty years to 
 every device of procrastination, it has nevertheless persisted, 
 and we must not only accept but champion its cause, for it is 
 here de jure as well as de facto. To be sure, it is still in its 
 nonage, nor can it escape from the barbarous tyranny of ma- 
 jorities until it shall have found the formula of an exactly pro- 
 portional representation. But the advent of Democracy is a 
 circumstance so tremendous in itself that we cannot reason by 
 analogy from the past to the future : the revolution of thought 
 is too radical. I am only sure that the moral ideal will some- 
 how find here its account. M. Charles Secre"tan has shown so 
 well the vital necessity of this that I cannot refrain from quot- 
 ing his own words : " When right and might are one, who shall 
 restrain them ? When it pleases an unlimited power to over- 
 turn the barriers it has itself set up, who shall restore them ? 
 Unlimited power is incompatible with the rights of the minor- 
 ity or the individual, but it cannot be curbed by violence : 
 it must submit itself to moral restraints. In Democracy the 
 morality of the greatest number is the only pledge that lib- 
 erty shall continue to exist. However discouraging this con- 
 clusion may be, it is certain that political safety depends 
 wholly upon private effort, upon an inner mission, if we may be 
 allowed to generalize this expression ; in short, upon the in- 
 dividual conversions which men of healthy mind and upright 
 heart may bring about by public exhortation, private discourse 
 and personal example." 
 
 Here, then, is a necessity. I aver that, like every need in Nat- 
 
1 8 The Present Duly 
 
 ure, it will receive satisfaction through the Power by which the 
 world exists. That Power knows its own ways. Experience 
 shows that every nation which unifies, solidifies itself, spon- 
 taneously produces a religion, which is but the consciousness, 
 whether true or false, of its destiny. Observe what is to-day 
 taking place in the United States, that field of experiment for 
 young communities. Ever since the conclusion of its Civil 
 War, twenty-five years ago, it has been in travail with its ideal. 
 Its self-conceit, which was a kind of youthful enthusiasm and 
 ebullition, will cease for want of nourishment. America is al- 
 ready the starting-point of a vast religious movement, amazing 
 those who watch it. Such is the law of democracies. Ours of 
 Europe, which cannot spread themselves over large spaces, and 
 which everything threatens, are so much the more bound to an 
 energetic sursutn corda. Unification is not yet complete in 
 France ; it is not yet true that we are one people, from highest 
 to lowest, but we shall be ; it cannot be gainsaid. And who 
 doubts that this sudden fusion will bring with itself a new for- 
 mula ? AH the elements are here, and must of necessity com- 
 bine, and combination must be accompanied here as every- 
 where by the disengagement of intense heat. We unite for the 
 sake of something to do, or something to care for. Society, 
 by the act of organization, confirms its ideals. This is why 
 idealism has the future to itself— nay, the immediate future. We 
 are on the eve of a new romantic movement, a new crusade. 
 We may rest assured of the triumphs of the "positives " sim- 
 ply because it must be so. 
 
 I have designedly put forward but this one argument, which 
 may seem to some nothing but my own ardent desire or my 
 own self will. I repeat, nevertheless, that there can be no 
 stronger one, and that this one is enough. I have, to be sure, 
 mentioned as symptoms of the renaissance of idealism the 
 writings of M. de Vogue, the " Sagesse " of Paul Verlaine, the 
 "Bois Sacr6" of Puvis de Chavannes, the "Beatitudes" of 
 C6sar Franck ; but to a solitary instance another can always 
 be opposed, and our catalogue would be accused of incom- 
 pleteness. Proofs deduced from mere observation are never of 
 value, above all in our own eyes, since one of our objects is to 
 discredit empirical methods. Besides, the manifestations of 
 idealism, which have to do with the imagination quite as much 
 
The Present Duty 19 
 
 as the heart and the will, reach only about thirty thousand of 
 us — only those in whose conscience and life art plays an enno- 
 bling part. One in a thousand ! I believe that we ought to ral- 
 ly our forces elsewhere, and that the field of battle should be 
 the great questions of Duty, of the Evolution and the Destiny 
 of Mankind. In this way we leave none behind us or below us. 
 Men of the people, humble, unlettered, thirty-eight millions of 
 Frenchmen, we are all enlisted in this contest. This is the 
 question which we put to our antagonists : Shall modern so- 
 ciety be revivified ? and can such a renewed society live with- 
 out positive assertion, without love? In short, can it live with- 
 out life? The response is, beyond a doubt, To live it is neces- 
 sary to have a soul. 
 
 There remains, to be sure, the reply of Royer-Collard : 
 " Well, let us perish ; that is also a solution." Why not? I 
 confess that I have nothing to answer. My conviction as to the 
 regeneration of the soul is that of a man who watches a diver 
 from the bank : he waits with absolute confidence to see him 
 come to the surface here or there, a little nearer or a little far- 
 ther off; he needs must reappear without long delay, else he 
 will have gone down forever. And the possibility that all is over 
 with us, no one will admit — no one in his heart of hearts believes. 
 
 in. 
 Once agreed that the hour is at hand when humanity will 
 gather itself together for the advance, we have but to aid in the 
 good work and to welcome in the new day. The future is not 
 a dole to be received, it is a prize to be won. It will be what 
 we shall make it to be ; and to define it clearly, as I am about 
 to try to do, to summon it forth from the place of shadows, is not 
 this to begin to make it already ? When this point is reached, 
 we have only to be steadfast in the supreme joy of creation. 
 This decisive moment of unfolding our design, of marking out 
 an untrodden path, thrills me with a sense of the divine. My 
 hope, proclaimed at last in daylight, has not lost the timid 
 charm of the long years when I cherished it in silence and 
 darkness. To aid each other in rising to a higher life, to bet- 
 ter ourselves by working for the good of the whole — surely 
 these are the rallying-cries which sounded in infancy in my ears 
 and those of the men of my time. Long forgotten, our souls 
 
20 The Present Duty 
 
 hear again the accents of their mother tongue, and the past 
 mingles sweetly with the future. 
 
 Before addressing ourselves to our task, it is imperative to 
 mutually understand one another well, for I believe in the com- 
 munion of saints, and that it should be made manifest. This is 
 an actual necessity, recognized by all who desire that their 
 labor shall not be in vain. In order to meet this need, I am 
 at work upon a series of Companions of the New Life, which is 
 to be a concordance of the spiritual movements of our time. 
 A compact must in some wise be formulated between all those 
 who follow, from whatever direction, the path that leads up- 
 ward. 
 
 Since, then, some form of alliance is indispensable, what 
 shall it be? And how shall we declare its object ? 
 
 The general belief seems to be that we shall inevitably find 
 ourselves engaged in a Catholic propaganda. " Religion alone 
 can regulate thought and action alike," says M. Edouard Rod. 
 "We cannot rest in a sentiment or a theory of religion ; we must 
 enroll ourselves in that practical system of worship to which 
 the Church has given a fixed and unalterable form — in the Ro- 
 man Catholic religion, which is at once a system of morality and 
 of administration. Such, at least, is the logical deduction f om 
 the arguments of M. de Vogue" and M. Dej-jardins." This is 
 clear enough ! The restoration and diffusion of the Roman 
 Catholic faith, pure and simple, is our aim, and sooner or later 
 we shall ourselves perceive it ! Many people believe this, 
 some to approve it, others to condemn. Every a-srrtion of an 
 ideal on our part they regard, in short, as a conscious or un- 
 conscious prologue to a new Apologia of the Roman Church. 
 
 I think they are mistaken. Our mission is in no degree eccle- 
 siastic. I wihh to say this with emphasis, for there would be 
 danger and harm in allowing such a mistake to persist. If it 
 were said that belief in half a dozen dogmas is a necessary pre- 
 liminary to the accomplishment of our full duty, the impossi- 
 bility, real or feigned, of such belief would in some minds be a 
 release from the obligations of duty itself, and they would be 
 lost to us by purely speculative differences. This must not be, 
 Christians or non-Christians ; as we have common obligations, 
 so must we have a common faith. Truly, 1 can but smile at the 
 pretence that we can arrive at our ideal— that is to say, ourrea- 
 
The Present Duty 21 
 
 son for living— only by a long theological or philosophical proc- 
 ess. Suppose, for instance, that it were necessary to frame a 
 confession of faith in several articles, and that by one of these 
 articles the Jews, let us say, should be excluded. Would it 
 follow, then, that Jews were incapable of co-operating with us 
 in a movement of reform ? Must the " positives " refuse to ad- 
 mit them ? What pedantic bigotry is here ! 
 
 To speak for myself, I should not blush, certainly, to ac- 
 knowledge for my Master the Christ of the Fathers, nor recoil 
 if my premises should carry me at last to the faith which Pascal 
 owned. But so much the more do I deprecate any shadow of 
 hostility between the disciples of the moral awakening,* even 
 those outside the Christian name, and the Roman Catholic 
 Church. The time is come when we may give ourselves the 
 delicate pleasure of justice in regard to this great power now 
 disarmed ; it may even be that an independent efficiency may 
 yet come to us from her by infiltration. I rejoice in all the con- 
 quests she has made, and I count them as our own, if they 
 diminish the number of those unhappy mortals who acknowledge 
 neither a destiny nor a duty. It matters little whether we 
 name this destiny the Evolution of Humanity or the Coming 
 of the Kingdom of God. Still less are we concerned whether, 
 in our vocabulary, "duty " becomes the "free development of 
 the personality," or "obedience to God," or "following the 
 Saviour." These are for us, as at bottom they really are, syno- 
 nyms ; are not their visible tokens the same deeds and an equal 
 charity ? In a word, our object is far more general than that of 
 the Roman Church, and includes it. We take our position not 
 at any one of the manifold sources of morality and righteous 
 endeavor, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or philosophical, but at 
 the confluence of them all. 
 
 So we shall gather in our assemblages persons come to us 
 by all these ways, and they shall be welcome. In being one of 
 us they will not cease to be whatever they already were, and by 
 acts alone they will become of us, without selection and with- 
 out exclusion except through their own indifference or their 
 own selfishness. They will follow their personal need in relig- 
 ious matters ; even the narrowness of the Breton peasant will 
 be respected, and we shall strengthen him in his feeling that the 
 
 *" Le Re veil moral." 
 
22 The Present Duty 
 
 Host is his stay and sustenance. We have each of us a holy of 
 holies; who shall dare intrude? 
 
 On such of our beliefs as have no rebound upon society, none 
 has the right to question us — none save the woman to whom 
 we owe our whole being, and the children who owe their being 
 to us. Let us not violate this reserve : too much talk about 
 religion is not a benefit. To the public, to our allies, we need 
 only proclaim the faith we have in common— faith sure and suf- 
 ficient that we are not living for nothing, and that we have a 
 work to do upon the earth. The possession of an ideal in life, 
 the faith in an ample duty — these are the things which unite us, 
 and these are enough to form us into a brotherhood militant. 
 
 The charge is renewed, however : we are told that morality 
 unsupported by defined dogma is always vacillatory ; sooner or 
 later, we are told, it must show its credentials — as, for example, 
 in the will of a personal God, whose full, logical demonstration 
 is insisted on at the outset. In default of this, no decision, no 
 certainty of the need of devotion to the general good. Step by 
 step we are brought to declare our belief in Jehovah, the Deca- 
 logue, the miracles, the personal existence of the angels, of the 
 devils, original sin and the holy sacrament (for it is a linked 
 chain), and finally we are told that it is hardly worth while to 
 have made this long circuit merely to arrive at blind credulity I* 
 Thereupon those mocking spirits who are always delighted, I 
 know not why, that nothing should be left standing, say exult- 
 ingly, "Look here ! This brand-new Tolstoism.this great moral 
 movement that has been dinned into our ears for so long, turns 
 out to be just the good, old-fashioned Catechism !" And as they 
 judge, apparently, of the rule of conduct as they do of the ele- 
 gance of their dress, merely by its novelty, this word "old- 
 fashioned "is to them a sufficient expression of contempt and 
 a final condemnation. 
 
 Doubtless we ought to be demolished by this attack. Yet 
 the lightness of heart of which I have spoken, which my convic- 
 tion of a fair future gives, does not forsake me. Nor am I with- 
 out a rejoinder ; indeed, I can even answer these objectors in 
 three ways, as I invoke authority, experience, or reason. 
 
 It cannot be denied that some great men of unquestioned 
 Christianity have not only held a revival of the moral and 
 
 • Foi du charbonnier. 
 
The Present Duty 23 
 
 religious spirit possible, but have predicted it independent of 
 the churches, which seems, especially to the irreligious, a mirage 
 or a chimera. Let us recall the noble discourse of Channing 
 at Philadelphia, May 30, 1841, on the Church Universal, in 
 which he says : " The pure soul moves freely through the whole 
 universe ; it belongs to the Church, which is the great family 
 of pure souls throughout the world ; nor can any one be shut 
 out from this Church unless of his own will he allows virtue 
 to die within his breast." Let us remember also the lofty 
 declaration of M. Charles Secr^tan in the conclusion of " La 
 Civilisation et la Croyance :" "The cause we have tried to 
 serve, the moment we have sought to hasten with our vows, 
 is not a return to the past, but the dawn of a new era— that 
 Christianity in spirit and in truth which has always existed in 
 a few souls, but which has never reigned triumphant." When 
 men like these, who would in early days have been the Fathers 
 of the Church, express themselves thus earnestly, they cannot 
 be disregarded and they cannot be set aside except by proofs. 
 Now, it is precisely the proofs of experience that support them ; 
 there does exist, in fact, a moral and religious association, with 
 no metaphysical countersign, such as has been declared impos- 
 sible. Beside the transient organizations for the protection of 
 peace or morals, where we have seen the clergy of various 
 denominations harmoniously working here in Europe, there are 
 established in America at this moment (Christmas, 189 1) a Free 
 Religious Association and societies for ethical culture num- 
 bering thousands of members, with schools, clubs, asylums, 
 newspapers, and founded on the principle that a religious union 
 of men is impossible on the basis of creed, and must hencefor- 
 ward be formed on the basis of action. I am not sorry, the em- 
 piricists, our opponents, being somewhat fuddled with facts, to 
 offer them this hard fact, to which they can only oppose airy 
 speculations as to the difference of race or surroundings — 
 in brief, a frail ideology. There is no reason, truly, why we 
 should not accomplish here, with a few distinctions easy to 
 indicate, exactly what America has already done. 
 
 But, once again, the best argument in favor of a "positive" 
 league, unhampered by any religious profession, is its own in- 
 ward necessity. In the five or six years since the disquiet of 
 our conscience has revealed itself as a problem to be solved, 
 
24 The Present Duty 
 
 and since the problem has become pressing and painful, we 
 have seen, one after another, the ghosts of bygone answers 
 raised and laid again: neo-Catholicism, neo- Protestantism, neo- 
 Mysticism, neo-Buddhism. Equally useless all. I have not 
 been surprised. All these solutions seek to reach the heart 
 and will by the intermediary of the intelligence or the imagina- 
 tion : they are all speculative ; and metaphysics are not what 
 we must look to. It seems that the answer must be practical, 
 not theoretical ; the question is not at first of belief, but of love. 
 Do we ask what we are to believe afterward ? Simply what 
 love will have us believe. Here the need will vary according 
 to the disposition — imaginative or logical, timid or bold, schol- 
 arly or simple — so that no right shall be disregarded ; as many 
 forms of religion as persons, in reality, with one single duty 
 for us all. 
 
 Not only, then, do I not make excuses for the lack of a 
 symbol or any profession of faith, but I boldly applaud it. 
 
 Extreme moderation of statement, except as to the employ- 
 ment of life, is intentional on my part, and legitimate. Formulas 
 are great evils ; the hidden soul of them, which each puts into 
 them for himself, is all that is important and marks the real 
 dissimilarities as well as the true affinities of men. I am far 
 indeed from wishing to inaugurate a new religion after the man- 
 ner of the Saint-Simonians, or any other. More than this, it 
 would be distinctly at variance with our principle, and we must 
 combat any such pretension if it were entertained, since — let 
 me say it for the last time — our conviction is that our pri- 
 mordial affair is not to speculate about the universe, but to 
 guide our actions within it. Besides, this position is conform- 
 able to justice, which decrees that for an evil to which all men 
 are alike exposed, as the evil of disbelief, there must be a 
 remedy within the reach of all men alike — la bonne volonte. 
 
 Our object is quite distinct, therefore, from that of the estab- 
 lished religions, and larger. Religions aim at personal edifica- 
 tion by expounding the mysteries of life and death. We pro- 
 pose a common peace and amelioration by the development of 
 the loving will. On this side, then, our position is sufficiently 
 clear and defined. 
 
 But it will be objected that we are confounding ourselves 
 with the hundreds of charitable organizations which already 
 
The Present Duty 25 
 
 exist. Is philanthropy the sole purpose of the "positives "? 
 
 Not so, I answer. We are distinct from those generous asso- 
 ciations formed for special ends ; but here, again, as in the case 
 of the churches, I would say that we include them. In the 
 same way we claim them for ours when they possess and com- 
 municate a soul ; only, while with the creeds our position is at 
 the point of confluence, here it is at a common source. Our 
 faith in duty and in destiny forms a reservoir whence the 
 heroes of philanthropy may draw their strength, or, in possible 
 disaster, their consolation. 
 
 One other characteristic distinguishes us widely from charita- 
 ble organizations. If philanthropy consists in so doing that 
 comfort is greater and suffering less widespread, then we are 
 not philanthropists. In charity so understood there is some- 
 thing at variance with our underlying principle. Common 
 amelioration is what we stand for, not a good wage and a good 
 dinner to the poor. On this point our position is so clearly 
 put in some weighty lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning that I 
 
 transcribe them : 
 
 " "lis impossible 
 To get at men excepting through their souls ; 
 And poets get directlier at the soul 
 Than any of your economists ; for which 
 Yon mast not overlook the poet's work 
 When scheming for the world's necessities. 
 The soul's the way. Not even Christ himself 
 Can save man else than as he holds man's soul. 
 
 Take the soul 
 And so possess the whole man, body and soul. 
 What we are imports us more 
 Than what we eat ; and life 
 Develops ftom within." * 
 
 Yes ; life develops from within, and within we must seek it, 
 if we wish to ameliorate it. To dream of doing good to some 
 one is as vain as to believe that we have changed a wild thorn 
 into a rose-tree by tying a rose to the tip of every branch ; the 
 roses fade and fall, the thorn remains what it was before. That 
 good may grow, it must be sown in the very heart of the peo- 
 ple and in our own heart also. Thus, our work will be differ- 
 ent from that of all the charitable enterprises, which are, I 
 agree, needful in a democracy regulated by law ; they are, 
 moreover, an excellent means of moral culture for those who 
 *" Aurora Leigh." 
 
26 The Present Duty 
 
 engage in them. But our object is different: we study our 
 sufferings, and those of our brothers, in their origin, in the 
 germ, and we address ourselves to the will. We are not 
 fighting evils, but Evil. 
 
 Here, then, equally definite on this side, is the field of action 
 where we are to agree and to co-operate. It is by souls upon 
 souls that we must act, in proportion as they are capable of 
 loving goodness and of struggling for it through everything. 
 
 It remains to speak of our guiding principle and practical 
 methods. 
 
 As to our principle. I have already enlarged upon it ; I am 
 so imbued with it that lam sure it can be felt through every- 
 thing that I say. It is the reconciliation of the conscience with 
 the higher life. Leaving aside all question of agreement on any 
 theoretic truth, we seek to arrive at faith through obedience to 
 duty. The ideal of humanity— by the name of God or any other 
 that you choose — is for us an object of desire and will before 
 being an object of knowledge: on this point we have no shadow 
 of doubt. All of us, Christians and non- Christians, know that 
 there is a task before humanity, and we set about it ; we are 
 sure of reaching our end by well-doing. 
 
 Nevertheless, well-doing, as it is understood by the society 
 of the present, is not what we have in mind, for it contradicts 
 our elementary principle. We understand as the true good, 
 for ourselves and for the community, moral force, strenuous 
 endeavor, true deserving. And in spite of this we range our- 
 selves—the best among us — under the system of almsgiving. 
 Charity is still conceived of as in the time of Queen Bertha, 
 who was, according to the old chroniclers, " a pious dame and 
 right good almoner." This feudal system of right action, alms- 
 giving, presupposes always an active and a passive : a suzerain 
 and vassals ; serfs, rather, not yet grown so far toward man- 
 hood as to recognize other happiness than the animal joys of 
 warmth, food and largesse. One saves one's self assuredly by 
 works of pity, and afterward humanity does as best it can. It 
 is as if we said to the poor, " My own idea of a good life, which 
 I realize in loading you with benefits, is out of your reach ; 
 apparently you exist to give employment to my warm heart, 
 to procure for me pure sensations of virtue, endeavor, endur- 
 ance, purification of nature by sacrifice. Leave all this to me. 
 

 The Present Duty 27 
 
 These are indeed good things, but you poor are too much 
 crushed under the burden of your necessities to comprehend 
 them ; leave me to develop my morality at the expense of 
 yours." Strange inconsistency in the application of a rule of 
 life, which, nevertheless, controls us still ! Charitable associa- 
 tions on every hand distribute alms of bread, coal, clothing ; 
 schools and colleges are establishments of intellectual alms- 
 giving, where children— thanks, perhaps, to a sacrifice on their 
 parents' part, not on their own — listlessly receive from a 
 teacher truths which they do not enjoy because they have not 
 earned them. Mental charity is also doled out by the poly- 
 technic institutions, Young Republican and Young France 
 unions, which organize gratuitous distribution of knowledge 
 to suspicious workingmen who distrust the too-great readiness 
 of the proffered gift. Everywhere we see the active and the 
 passive elements ; in brief, the eleemosynary system. In the 
 neighboring field of religion and morals it is still the same : 
 sermons, missions, all the various devices of conversion by 
 authority, are forms of moral almsgiving. But here the error 
 goes further, even to the seizure of consciences in order to 
 bestow upon them an ideal which we ourselves find good. 
 This may entail fearful consequences. The tyrannous theocracy 
 of Geneva, the Inquisition, and Torquemada's well-intentioned 
 crimes, are the logical outcome of this false conception of moral 
 charity. The fanatics of the past assuredly meant to do 
 good to a passive humanity — they did not understand that a 
 Paradise not chosen, not desired, not freely gained, may per- 
 chance be a hell. Their progression was speculative, from 
 faith to act, inversely to our movement and our principle. 
 
 The eleemosynary method is neither sure nor unequivocally 
 good. He who gives bread to a tramp gives perhaps the 
 strength to be employed in committing a crime for which he 
 will be executed, and thus perhaps the giver gives death. He 
 who teaches the tramp to read and to write makes him, it may 
 be, capable of greater wickedness, of unheard-of crime, and 
 thus again, perhaps, gives death. There are too many such 
 chances to allow us to adopt almsgiving as a general principle. 
 There cannot be a law of good with so large an admixture of 
 uncertainty. On the other hand, he surely gives in charity to 
 the unhappy who rectifies their ideal of living and teaches them 
 
28 The Present Duty 
 
 to love that ideal. The weakling whose will is thus amended 
 learns to place his well-being in well-doing, in patience and 
 achievement ; he will be as well taught as the man whom you 
 would teach, but of his own effort ; he will escape from misery 
 as easily as the man whom you would support, and, having at 
 the same time preserved his dignity, feel himself co-operating 
 in a grand work and becoming more manly. 
 
 If we reflect on this subject, we are not surprised that so much 
 kindness in the world should have been expended to pure loss ; 
 that all these benevolent enterprises should have answered so 
 ill the hopes of their promoters, and that, in spite of having 
 done so much for the people, the so-called "social question" 
 should be more threatening than ever. We believe that the 
 r61e of little providences superintending an inert multitude is 
 no longer suited to the age, and that the idea of diity must be 
 made clear and manifest, and communicated to all men. Our 
 own goodness is dear to us, but that of the whole is dearer. 
 We do not attach extreme importance to being personally 
 saved, if humanity is lost. We mean to share this ideal of 
 which we are possessed with as many men as possible ; we 
 wish to make them attain- to it by their own efforts— by the 
 via dolorosa, which is still the only way. 
 
 The economists have taught us the nullity of practical results 
 from almsgiving. It does not enrich the community by a pen- 
 ny-worth, being but an inconsiderable displacement of money ; 
 it impoverishes, rather, because it defers, in a certain number 
 of persons, the necessity of work. The moral results are no 
 better : it is only a little displacement of selfishness without 
 diminishing the whole amount in the community ; rather in- 
 creasing it, because in some the ardor of asking and of taking 
 grows faster than the ardor of giving in others. As the econo- 
 mists have for object the total wealth of society, let us be con- 
 cerned with its total morality— let us endeavor to augment that. 
 Since egotism is the destructive element, it must be made to 
 disappear, not from our own life alone, but from all other lives. 
 And if we are told that sacrifice must have an object, and that 
 it consequently will generate selfishness in turn by a sort of 
 inevitable see-saw, we reply that this is precisely where we tri- 
 umph. Since to devote ourselves to persons, as to children, 
 the poor or the sick, is to waste the force that should be di- 
 
The Present Duly 29 
 
 reeled to the morality of the whole, and since, being human, 
 we must devote ourselves to something, it follows that our only 
 outlet is to devote ourselves to the realization of an ideal good. 
 We must possess such an ideal, then, and it must be clear and 
 compelling ; we must look beyond the individual, if we would 
 not vainly expend our life. The common ideal according to 
 which we live — this is the true social wealth. To increase this 
 store, while sharing it at the same time with those who are in 
 need, we may follow the lead of ihe economists and introduce 
 into the government of conscience the two fruitful principles 
 of the new charity — assistance by means of employment and 
 mutual aid. Now, to give employment to poor souls is to give 
 them an ideal, a duty ; it is to charge them with responsibility, 
 strength-giving burden ; to establish mutual aid for poor souls 
 is to make the example of each the common profit of all. Here 
 is what we have to do. In a word, we must replace almsgiv- 
 ing by awakening. 
 
 A fine principle, it may be said ; a beautiful, a divine, task, 
 if only it could be accomplished. Unluckily, it cannot be ; and 
 this is a logical consequence of the principle itself. We can 
 give bread, coal, warm clothing ; we can give instruction in 
 history and mathematics ; but it is a contradiction in terms to 
 ask us to develop from without what can only come from with- 
 in, and what is only valuable on condition that it is the result 
 of free activity. Let us thiow to the winds the wish that hu- 
 manity may desire its own salvation and find once more delight 
 in its own grandeur, and let us keep silence on our own van- 
 tage-ground ; besides, what hold have we on men's wills ? 
 
 We are not without a hold. It is certain that we writers who 
 can speak aloud and compel attention are not a chosen kw, for 
 all that ; we should give up this wrong notion. I knew a poor 
 woman, a woman of the people, dying of consumption in a gar- 
 ret at Clicby. She had a strange, rude manner of speech, yet 
 her lingering agony only forced from her one single sigh. 
 "Great heavens," she said, "to think that there are people 
 who suffer more than I do now !" The soul of humanity was 
 alive in this poor, wornout body, and we must confess that 
 this woman realized what is our destiny better than we our- 
 selves. Yet were we not there as depositaries and inter- 
 mediaries through whom her force shall be transmitted ? I be- 
 
30 The Present Duty 
 
 lieve that words, themselves of little value, are a kind of circu- 
 lating medium by means of which the power of the will is 
 diffused throughout the world. 
 
 Nor is this all ; the will itself is but the bridge from love to 
 action, from desire to deed. We can help to stimulate this 
 desire by unweariedly showing what is best in ourselves and in 
 our possibilities ; in displaying an ideal, a far-off Grail, whose 
 wisdom shall haunt the dreams of young men. Poetry, I have 
 already said, is heroism in another key. What a career for us ! 
 What ought to be our humility when a mission so glorious is 
 entrusted to us, feeble creatures that we are, and how great 
 should be our exultation at possessing what is the supreme 
 good, according to our doctrine, a greater burden than others, 
 an ampler duty and a beneficent responsibility ! 
 
 Having our task thus set before us, we may begin upon it in 
 ways which are neither vague nor chimerical, but practical and 
 consistent with our guiding maxim. Let us enumerate them : 
 
 i. For two or three years it will be good to limit ourselves 
 to spreading opinion, for nothing is more dangerous than enter- 
 prises undertaken before they are ripe ; our work must be 
 desired and demanded ; it must be expected in order to be wel- 
 comed. 
 
 2. This spread of opinion should have as its first object the 
 undoing of some of the evil which literature has wrought in the 
 last forty years. Sincere minds must be taught that pure dia- 
 lectics, the study of phenomena as things in themselves, leads 
 only to tautology and stammering, while the world about us 
 remains full of mystery in which we ourselves are plunged, and 
 that skepticism and irony, on the other hand, are only an 
 avowal of incompetency, of which we should be no more proud 
 than of any other mental deficiency. The humblest parish 
 priest who longs to be better than he is, knows more of the 
 essential things of life than the prince of scoffers. It is time to 
 exalt the humble, and to show them that the noise which intimi- 
 dates them is only the blatant heralding of a nonentity which 
 to-day shall be stripped bare. 
 
 3. We must cover with contempt and ridicule the productions 
 of that low-toned literature which attacks weak wills. I 
 believe we can do this by going straight to the question of 
 
The Present Duty 31 
 
 smnll profits, of rapacity, always unpopular in France. Here 
 it will be necessary to set a new fashion. 
 
 4. "Philosophize with thy soul," said one of the ancients. 
 We must learn also to judge with the soul, not merely aesthetic- 
 ally, by the pleasure of eye or ear, for this mental separation 
 made by our other faculties is artificial. We must not forget 
 that the most important of all things is to live, and that words 
 spoken or written are, in reality, deeds, and as such exalt or 
 depress the rules of conduct to which, we still declare, our 
 action is submitted. We ought not to hesitate to say on any 
 occasion, "This book is good," or "This book is bad." If 
 two or three prominent critics would have the courage of their 
 convictions, this could be done. It is time that these simple 
 and all-important questions should be plainly put, and that we 
 should have them plainly and simply answered. Our judgment 
 needs rectification ; our moral sensitiveness has grown rusty 
 from disuse. 
 
 5. In demanding that art shall be penetrated by a higher 
 morality and a greater seriousness, I do not ask for the moral 
 commonplaces that fill Sunday-school libraries. Far from that ; 
 the reform, as I have said, must begin in hearts, not in books. 
 If I may use a homely image, the moment to season our food 
 is when it is still in the pot, not when we are offering it to our 
 guests at table. There are vulgarity and stupid affectation in 
 pretending to be occupied with morals in literature, whose 
 very first precept is veracity, and where refinement demands 
 that expression do not overstep conviction. The author need 
 not assume the attitude of a preacher ; let him but have a 
 lofty soul, and every word he writes will preach for him, uncon- 
 sciously to himself, with an inborn persuasiveness. 
 
 6. A current of communication must be established between 
 all those who profess to believe in duty and who live accord- 
 ing to that belief. For this it is necessary that earnest and 
 thoughtful men should know of whatever is going on around 
 them ; should follow the debates in the legislatures, and inter- 
 pose whenever the voice of justice needs to be heard there; 
 should inform themselves of practical heroism, and recognize 
 the efforts which private initiative is making in Africa and in 
 every spot where men are fighting for an ideal ; should direct 
 schemes for social improvement, should grasp in fellowship the 
 
32 The Present Duty 
 
 rough hands of workmen. It is essential, too, that these latter 
 should know that we are with them, and that our heroes should 
 feel themselves upheld by a very strong sympathy, fo that, far 
 away on the banks of the Niger or the Oubanghi, the)'- may be 
 strengthened by the consciousness that their allies here are also 
 working to give humanity reasons for living. Lectures, con- 
 ferences, publications, will all be useful in making manifest this 
 solidarity and in strengthening it. 
 
 7. It will be well that our doctrine of simple affirmation of 
 righteousness — as simple and as old as mankind itself— should 
 be everywhere plainly set forth. From the distinguished young 
 men whom I know I look for the development of this vital 
 truth. Starting from the grand words of Pascal that "the will 
 is one of the principal organs of faith," supported by Kant's 
 " Critique of Pure Reason," they will reiterate the truth that only 
 the good life clears up the doubts of the mind ; that faith is 
 purely and simply our consciousness of moral growth, and 
 gradual as that growth itself, and the reward of it. They will 
 prove to us that the impossibility of formulating our belief, far 
 from being a discouragement, is our chief glory ; since it would 
 be immoral if faith could be formulated and put into words, so 
 that to know how to read would be sufficient to enable us to 
 possess it, and to be ignorant of reading would be enough to 
 deprive us of it. Faith is incommunicable, and must be so, 
 like the moral growth whence it emanates. 
 
 8. A kindred task to this (although more individual), and 
 one which I equally recommend to young students of good 
 will, is what I call the elaboration of an interior Christianity. I 
 mean by this a work which shall show in the facts of intimate, 
 contemporaneous daily experience the same spiritual phe- 
 nomena which Christianity has at all times recognized under 
 the names of sin, mortal sin, redemption, grace, the results of 
 asceticism, of prayer, illumination by the Holy Ghost, blessed- 
 ness of renunciation, hidden peace, etc., etc. We should re- 
 construct thus a sort of interior Christ where every noble soul 
 would recognize his own experience. 
 
 The fortunate results of such exertions would be twofold. 
 To Christians it would bring a renewal and revivification of 
 their faith, making it actual to them, showing it alive beneath 
 the dead stubble of the letter ; to non-Christians it would be 
 
The Present Duty 33 
 
 an enormous help in making them understand their Christian 
 fellow-workers from within, and in giving to themselves the ad- 
 vantage of eighteen centuries of an admirable moral experi- 
 ence. Besides, my hope is obstinate— a beginning of unanim- 
 ity would be made between them. 
 
 Such, as well as I can see and interpret them, are the various 
 directions in which the movement of opinion will spread during 
 the preliminary period of the awakening. But during this time 
 practical reforms should not be forgotten. They should go 
 hand in hand with the other. 
 
 We are forbidden by our principles to believe that much can 
 be effected by constraint or civil laws. An impassioned poet 
 or a man of fervid faith will forever be of more use than a hun- 
 dred timid deputies. But it may be well to become a part of 
 the political organization for the sake of guiding and restrain- 
 ing it. 
 
 9. We are working, then, in the drift of liberal democracy, we 
 are protesting against the fatal effects of the principle of alms- 
 giving. We shall combat Protection and every form of State 
 socialism ; logically we can do nothing else, since to believe in 
 the moral law is to assert the necessity of the largest liberty 
 and the benefit of responsibility. It is easy to see how these 
 propositions reciprocally depend on each other and stand or 
 fall together. As to the founding and establishment of new 
 colonies, or anything else, we claim that chartered companies, 
 religious missions and private enterprises should all have a 
 fair field, should indeed be encouraged and stimulated to ex- 
 ertion. We shall try to prevent the State from assuming the 
 risks, the rewards, the energy in action, which are the portion of 
 the individual. We hold in abhorrence the troop of slaves 
 which is the dream of the self-deluding State socialist or an- 
 archist dazzled by a specious appearance of justice. 
 
 10. Our principles lead us also to endeavor that the army, 
 the universal school of our people, shall not be a school of 
 automatic action and depression of individuality, as is falsely 
 declared it must be for the sake of discipline. 
 
 Discipline is indeed necessary, but the ideal discipline is that 
 which should be the result of a single will throughout the 
 whole, instead of the extinction of the will-power ; an extinc- 
 tion which is an injury to all civil society, since every year some 
 
34 The Present Duty 
 
 of the released soldiers return to its midst. For such a disci- 
 pline a profound moral reform in the corps of officers is in- 
 dispensable ; they should be really the elect of the land, ripe in 
 experience and penetrated with the' love of their profession, 
 even more than any other of the teachers of our youth. They 
 should love the men for the sake of the good whose humble 
 instruments they may become ; they should delight in giving 
 their lives to forming them. In the military schools of Saint- 
 Cyr, Saint-Maixent, Saumur and Fontainebleau, then, the moral 
 awakening should begin ; here are the first beacons to be fired. 
 ii. We are bound also to aid public instruction in its at- 
 tempts at reform, although we can but provisionally approve of 
 State instruction. We must encourage it to stimulate activity 
 everywhere, to arouse its professors to their responsibilities, 
 and to make them organize. Happy will it be for us when they 
 shall cease to drag the Napoleonic chain. We should be glad 
 to see the intellectual tyranny of Paris shaken by the creation 
 of great university centers throughout the provinces, so that 
 more and more men, professors in them, should risk them- 
 selves upon the dangerous but luminous peaks of free and 
 full intellectual life. 
 
 12. We are also bound to demand every guaranty and all 
 respect for voluntary associations which do not threaten the 
 State — that is, do not pretend to equal functions. The famous 
 right of association imposes itself on the anxious considera- 
 tion of every one who is engaged in the moral awakening. The 
 reason is obvious. To give but a hint of my meaning, it will 
 be understood that the mutual independence of Church and 
 State, however legitimate and necessary it may seem to the 
 upright conscience, can only be undertaken when the ulterior 
 freedom of each power is guaranteed not only by legislative 
 measures, but by a firm conception of justice in the minds and 
 dealings of men. We must respect and regard rights of asso- 
 ciation outside our own. 
 
 13. Toward the laboring classes, who live from day to day by 
 manual toil, and on whom we feel our future to depend, we 
 must pursue a different policy from that of the present. My 
 own experience among the workingmen of Paris has con- 
 vinced me that they can only be helped in the things where 
 they help themselves ; what is done for them will always be 
 
The Present Duty 35 
 
 listlessly, indifferently, received. This observation is perfectly 
 in accord with our doctrine of moral awakening. 
 
 When the various coal companies have heaped all kinds of 
 charities on their miners— nurseries, hospitals, schools, libraries 
 — and are amazed to find that after all these inducements the 
 Gr£ve* is still thronged, we are forced to understand that the 
 miners would only have valued these good things if they had 
 won them for themselves, like men, by the expenditure of their 
 own effort. To hold men quit of endeavor is to plunge them 
 back into animality and to give them over to their passions. 
 
 I believe that the moral method is possible ; we ought to 
 know humanly, personally, those whom we wish to help. Why 
 not say to the organizers of a co-operative store, for example : 
 "Why don't you start a mental co-operative society? Sub- 
 scribe together to papers and reviews, have a library as the 
 clubs do, have patterns of clothing in a room where your wives 
 may meet in the evenings to sew, by light furnished at the 
 common expense ; if one of you has learned anything which 
 he wants to tell his comrades, let him tell it ; or if you want to 
 hear one of the famous lecturers, get him to come to you. Our 
 friends are ready to go to you — not for nothing, certainly, nor 
 as a charity, but for a fee, so that what they have to say, paid 
 for by sacrifices on your part, may seem valuable to you." 
 Only thus can the true People's Palace, of which we hear so 
 much, be founded or prosper. For the same reason we must 
 support the principle of profit-sharing — impossible to regulate 
 by law for lack of a sure control, but practicable to benevo- 
 lence and justice. 
 
 This principle is good not merely because it is equitable, but 
 because it bestows on the poor the noble dangers of responsi- 
 bility, transforming them from beasts of burden into men. 
 
 There may be more reforms, which do not occur to me at the 
 moment, to be proposed and carried out in the same spirit, 
 which is broad enough for them all. But I have already said 
 enough to show that it is not the imagination but the will itself 
 that we wish to deal with. Since our faith is like a sunrise 
 behind a steep hill which we must climb before we can see, let 
 us begin our ascent ; since it is our general affirmation that right 
 
 * Public square in Paris (near the H6tel de Ville) where workmen out of 
 employment station themselves. 
 
36 The Present Duty 
 
 action is of the first importance, let us decide upon some defi- 
 nite good act. Our ideas are in order and our plan is clear. 
 
 I have as yet spoken only of the preparatory period, which 
 should occupy the next two or three years. It is probable that 
 the idea will take shape of itself after that (and of itself it must 
 be, or we contradict ourselves), and we shall probably see a 
 moral-aid society, like those societies of New York, Philadel- 
 phia and London, embody itself in France by spontaneous 
 aggregation. This will be the beginning of a second period, 
 militant still, but more expansive. 
 
 What this society will do I am neither able nor worthy to 
 indicate. Moreover, it is not yet time. I only wish that it may 
 be very austere, its action only arising from its moral force, and 
 its prestige more important than its numbers. It ought to be 
 very difficult to enter it, and very easy to lose the right of mem- 
 bership. Fifty men acting in harmony, full of energy and con- 
 viction, would be enough. 
 
 This society will have its organ, where we shall always hear 
 the voice of justice, the incorruptible champion of good. Since 
 it will be recognized as a civil unit, it will receive legacies and 
 donations which at present go largely to charitable works or to 
 academies for lack of a better object, and it can lay secure foun- 
 dations for itself in the manner of its elder sister societies in 
 America. 
 
 Divided into as many sections as there are fields for the exer- 
 cise of moral energy, it will have its orators and writers ; it will 
 watch over the standard of books in primary schools, urge the 
 formation of clubs and guilds, encourage missionaries and 
 explorers, popularize their efforts and proclaim their triumphs, 
 even in failure or in death ; everywhere it will attack immo- 
 rality and inertia, which is immorality known by its true name. 
 In accordance with its name and its guiding maxim, it will give 
 that moral aid nowhere to be found as yet ; that is to say, for 
 the sick and infirm of will, about whom society does not concern 
 itself, it will open hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, retreats for 
 all the obscure maladies with which our time is afflicted ; it will 
 assign saving tasks and missions to those contorted and crip- 
 pled souls, persuaded that endeavor alone bestows peace and 
 reintegrates man in his true nature. 
 
 In times of public catastrophe or sudden physical calamities, 
 
The Present Duty 37 
 
 a brigade of the unhappy and unbalanced will be hurried to the 
 place of suffering to give their aid there ; a mutuality of help- 
 fulness will be established, and the really assisted, the truly 
 saved, will be those who went to do what they could. 
 
 And finally, to secure such an organization of men interpene- 
 trated with one and the same discipline, it will be necessary to 
 have an actual moral seminary, a school of liberty, as we may 
 call it, where young people of promise will be admitted at an 
 early age — a school whose object it will be to prepare youth for 
 all duties of life, and to form character, which is too often lack- 
 ing in a liberal democracy. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Paul, 
 Augustine, will doubtless count for more than Cicero in such a 
 school ; contrary to the custom even of Jesuit seminaries, and 
 the direct experience of mutual dependence, strenuous and vir- 
 tuous life will count for even more than they. There will be no 
 hesitation in teaching pupils present history ; they will be made 
 to balance the advantages and disadvantages of social and soli- 
 tary life ; the subjects of women and marriage will be frankly 
 dealt with ; they will be taught how to honor a wife and how to 
 perform the duties of a husband and father. They will study 
 living humanity by being brought into contact with the hum- 
 blest classes ; for the custom will arise of sending our sons, not 
 on a tour to Italy or the East, but to some poor tenement in 
 M£nilmontant or Montrouge, to serve a three months' appren- 
 ticeship to life. 
 
 The acquisition of each new fact will be its own recompense, 
 and must be striven for as our doctrine demands. We shall 
 recruit from the vanishing middle class an elite who will com- 
 municate to our successors the best that was in us, following 
 the example of the part played in the beginning of our bour- 
 geois age by liberal and earnest nobles like de Tocqueville, 
 Broglie, d'Haussonville, Ag6nor de Gasparin. 
 
 I must stop. O quanto e corto it dire! How inadequate are 
 words to describe what the eyes of desire already plainly see ! 
 It is best to keep silence as to the precise details of our plans. 
 We must respect the mystery of the future. Our reflections 
 have convinced us that it unveils itself little by little, slowly, 
 and only to those who evoke it by the conduct of their life. 
 The time will come when these schemes, which seem vast and 
 chimerical to the nonchalant onlookers of to-day, will appear 
 
38 The Present Duty 
 
 slight and insufficient to the actors of to-morrow. Once again, 
 let us respect the mystery of our future creation ; let us not 
 seek too eagerly to know, for knowledge without action is our 
 great temptation. Let us concern ourselves only with being 
 men of good will. 
 
 Our present attitude is that of good men whose desire is 
 great, but who feel themselves too weak to realize it. Neither 
 can we renounce it ; and we send out a passionate cry for 
 help. This attitude is perfectly well known ; it has a name ; 
 it is Prayer. Let us repeat, then, with all our strength, the 
 Christian petition, "Thy kingdom come!" Only, instead of 
 murmuring these words upon our knees, with eyes raised to 
 heaven, let us say them standing on our feet, and as a com- 
 mand to ourselves. The help we implore has been given to 
 us ; it is, first, the consciousness of our destiny, and, next, the 
 deep conviction that the work of saints and heroes, during so 
 many centuries of agonized struggle, to uplift man from brute, 
 cannot have been a vain expenditure. 
 
 It would not be just to accuse us of over-confidence. We do 
 not trust in our strength, but in the power of evolution which is 
 inherent in mankind. We have no personal pride : we desire 
 to begin simply ; we know that nothing great can be built ex- 
 cept on a foundation of humility and self-forgetfulness. It is 
 possible, it is even probable, that we shall never see our 
 heart's desire ; but it matters not : others will come after us who 
 shall see it in a fullness which we cannot imagine. This is the 
 thought that cheers us onward ; this is the secret comfort of all 
 true lovers who desire that the object of their love shall be 
 made happy, even if it is not by themselves. And if you have 
 listened to us ever so little, you will concede that what actuates 
 us is really love itself. 
 
THE CONSERVATOR 
 
 The Conservator is not the organ of the Ethical Movement, as known 
 in America and Europe, but is published in its interest. It is an exponent 
 of the world-movement in Ethics, and of that movement as specially re- 
 flected in Ethical societies. 
 
 Published monthly by Billslein & Son, 41 N. Tenth Street, Philadelphia. 
 
 Entered at the Post Office in Philadelphia as second-class matter. 
 
 Per Year - - - $1.00; Single Copy, - - 10 cents. 
 
 The Conservator is always full of fresh and vigor- 
 ous thoughts on topics of prime impo?'tance to every reflect- 
 ive mind. —Daniel G. Brinton. 
 
 The Conservator stands for the best and the freest. 
 It is bound by no creed, limited by no dogma. It is true 
 to a?i ideal, and the ideal is the highest and noblest. It is 
 for those who believe in thought, in investigation, in hear- 
 ing and saying. It is the defender of intellectual hos- 
 pitality. Those who believe in human progress should 
 take The Conservator.— Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 
 The Conservator deserves far better support from the 
 Ethical Movement than it has received. It has been con- 
 ducted with spirit and ability; and if what has sometimes 
 been said has not been acceptable to all, this is what must 
 
/ &\53/fy 
 
 be expected in any free movement. The energy and en- 
 thusiasm of Mr. Traubel and his associates have been 
 remarkable, and, I must believe, will yet win their re- 
 ward. Let every friend of the Ethical Movement help as 
 generously, and co-operate as faithfully , as a few are now 
 doing, and The Conservator will be made all that it 
 should be — a power in our Movement and in the commu- 
 nity. — William M. Salter. 
 
 The Board, therefore, again wishes to call the atten- 
 tion of the members to a monthly, appearing under the 
 editorship of the Secretary of our sister Society in Phila- 
 delphia, under the name <7/The Conservator. Although 
 this monthly is not an organ of the Societies, and is not 
 under their absolute control, it yet appeals to our sympa- 
 thies, and may justly claim our active support and assist- 
 ance. The monthly reports about the Society, from the 
 pen of one of our members, are intended to keep the mem- 
 bers and the public informed of the occurrences in the So- 
 ciety, and may also be effectually utilized in our Ethical 
 propaganda. The price of subscription is very small, and 
 probably within the reach of almost every member. — From 
 the last Annual Report of the Board of Trus- 
 tees of the New York Society for Ethical Cult- 
 ure. 
 
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