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 THE MEASURE OF THE HOURS
 
 The Measure of the 
 Hours 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 Translated by 
 Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 
 
 I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1907
 
 Copyright, 1905, 
 By Fox, Duffield and Company 
 
 Copyright, 1907, 
 
 By G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 Copyright, 1904, 1905, 
 
 By Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
 Copyright, 1905, 1906, 1907, 
 
 By Harper and Brothers 
 
 Copyright, 1907, 
 By Dodd, Mead and Company 
 
 Published, April, iqcr;
 
 STATE TE 
 SANTA BAf- 
 
 Note 
 
 Of the essays forming this volume, some 
 two or three are now published, in English, 
 for the first time. The remainder have 
 appeared, at different times, in newspapers 
 and magazines, including the Fortnightly 
 Review, Harper's Magazine, the Atlantic 
 Monthly, the Critic, the International 
 Quarterly, the Daily Mail, and others. 
 The thanks of the author and translator 
 are due to the proprietors and editors of 
 these periodicals for their leave to republish 
 in the present volume.
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Measure of the Hours 9 
 
 Immortality 25 
 
 The Gods of War 65 
 
 Our Social Duty 83 
 
 Our Anxious Morality 107 
 
 Rome 155 
 
 The Psychology of Accident 177 
 
 In Praise of the Fist 197 
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 211 
 
 Concerning *« King Lear " 227 
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 245 
 
 Perfumes 357
 
 THE MEASURE OF THE HOURS
 
 THE MEASURE OF THE 
 HOURS 
 
 SUMMER is the season of happiness. 
 When, among the trees, in the moun- 
 tains or by the sea, the fair hours of the 
 year, the hours for which we have waited 
 and hoped since the depths of winter, the 
 hours which at last open to us the golden 
 gates of leisure, return for our delight, let 
 us learn to enjoy them fully, continuously, 
 voluptuously. Let us have for these privi- 
 leged hours a nobler measure than that into 
 which we pour the ordinary hours. Let us 
 gather their dazzling minutes in unaccus- 
 tomed urns, glorious, transparent and made 
 of the very light which they are to contain, 
 
 ii
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 even as we serve a costly wine not in the 
 common glass of the daily table, but in the 
 purest cup of crystal and silver locked in the 
 sideboard of the banqueting-room. 
 
 II 
 
 The measuring of time ! We are so con- 
 structed that we cannot be made conscious 
 of time and impressed with its joys or sor- 
 rows unless we count and weigh it, like an 
 invisible currency. It takes shape, acquires 
 its substance and its value only in compli- 
 cated forms of apparatus which we have 
 contrived in order to render it apparent; 
 and, having no existence in itself, it bor- 
 rows the taste, the perfume and the shape 
 of the instrument that rules it. For this 
 reason, the minutes ticked off by our little 
 watches wear a different aspect from those 
 prolonged by the great hand of the belfry 
 or cathedral-clock. It behoves us, there- 
 
 12
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 fore, not to be indifferent to the birth of the 
 hours. Even as we have glasses whose 
 shape, shade and brilliancy vary according 
 as they are called upon to carry to our lips 
 light claret or rich burgundy, cool hock or 
 heavy port, or the gladness of champagne, 
 why should not our minutes be numbered in 
 ways appropriate to their melancholy, their 
 inertness or their joy? It is fitting, for in- 
 stance, that our working months and our 
 winter days, days of bustle, business, hurry 
 and restlessness, should be strictly, methodi- 
 cally, harshly divided and registered by the 
 metal wheels and hands and the enamelled 
 faces of our chimney-clocks, our electric or 
 pneumatic dial-plates or our small pocket- 
 watches. Here, majestic time, the master 
 of gods and men, the immense human form 
 of eternity, is no more than a stubborn in- 
 sect gnawing mechanically at a life devoid 
 of horizon, sky or rest. At most, at the 
 warning moment that precedes the stroke, 
 
 13
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 during the too-short evening snatched, 
 under the lamp, from the cares of hunger 
 or vanity, will the great copper pendulum 
 of the Dutch or Norman clock be allowed 
 to make slower and more impressive the 
 seconds that go before the steps of grave 
 night advancing. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On the other hand, for our hours no longer 
 indifferent, but really sombre, for our 
 hours of discouragement, of self-denial, of 
 sickness and pain, for the dead minutes of 
 our life, let us regret the time-honoured, 
 dejected and silent hour-glass of our ances- 
 tors. It is to-day no more than an inactive 
 symbol on our tombstones or the funeral 
 hangings of our churches, except where, piti- 
 fully fallen, it may still be found presiding, 
 in some country kitchen, over the fastidious 
 cooking of our boiled eggs. It no longer 
 continues as an instrument of time, though 
 
 14
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 it still figures, in company with the scythe, 
 on its antiquated blazon. And yet it had 
 its merits and its reasons for existence. In 
 the dull, sad days of human thought, in the 
 • cloisters built around the abode of the dead, 
 in the convents that opened their doors and 
 windows only to the wavering glimmers of 
 another world, more awful than our own,, 
 the sand-glass was, for the hours stripped 
 of their joys, their smiles, their happy sur- 
 prises and their ornaments, a measure 
 whose place no other could have filled as 
 gracefully. It did not state time with pre- 
 cision; it stifled it in powdery particles. It 
 was made for counting one by one the sands 
 of prayer and waiting, of terror and weari- 
 ness. The minutes sped by in dust, isolated 
 from the circumambient life of the sky, the 
 garden and space, secluded in their glass 
 phial even as the monk was secluded in his 
 cell, marking, naming no hour, burying 
 them all in the funeral sand, while the un- 
 
 15
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 occupied thoughts that watched over their 
 dumb and incessant fall passed away with 
 them to be added to the ashes of the dead. 
 
 IV 
 
 Between the glorious banks of flaming 
 summer, it seems best to enjoy the glowing 
 succession of the hours in the order in which 
 they are marked by the orb itself that 
 showers them upon our leisure. In these 
 wider, more open, more lingering days, I 
 believe and trust only in the great divisions 
 of light which the sun names to me with the 
 warm shadow of its rays on the marble dial 
 which there, in the garden, beside the lake, 
 reflects and records in silence, as though it 
 were doing an insignificant thing, the course 
 of our worlds through planetary space. By 
 this immediate, this only authentic tran- 
 scription of the wishes of time which 
 directs the stars, our poor human hour, 
 
 16
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 which rules our meals and all the little 
 actions of our little lives, acquires a nobility, 
 a direct and urgent fragrance of infinity 
 that render vaster and more health-giving 
 the dazzling, dewy mornings and almost 
 motionless afternoons of the fair and 
 immaculate summer. 
 
 Unfortunately, the sun-dial, which alone 
 knew how to follow with dignity the grave 
 and luminous march of the spotless hours, 
 is becoming rare and is disappearing from 
 our gardens. It is hardly anywhere to be 
 found save in the main court, on the stone 
 terraces, in the mall, among the quincunxes 
 of some old town, some old castle, some 
 ancient palace, where its gilt figures, its face 
 and style are wearing away under the hand 
 of the very god whose worship they should 
 perpetuate. Nevertheless, Provence and 
 some of the Italian market-towns have re- 
 mained faithful to the celestial clock. Here 
 we often see displayed, on the sunny gable 
 
 17
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 of the brightest of old, dilapidated country- 
 houses, the frescoed circle over which the 
 sunbeams carefully measure their fairy 
 progress. And mottoes, profound or art- 
 less, but always significant, because of the 
 place which they fill and the part which they 
 play in a vast life, strive to blend the human 
 soul with incomprehensible phenomena. 
 "L'heure de la justice ne sonne pas aux 
 cadrans de ce monde: the hour of justice 
 does not strike on the dials of this world," 
 says the inscription on the sun-dial of the 
 church at Tourette-sur-Loup, that extraor- 
 dinary, that almost African little village, 
 near to where I live, which, amid the 
 crumbling rocks and clambering aloes and 
 fig-trees, resembles a miniature Toledo re- 
 duced to a skeleton by the sun. Another 
 radiant clock-face proudly proclaims "A 
 htmhie motus" as its motto: "I am moved 
 by the light." "Amydst y e flovvres, I tell 
 y e hours," says an old marble dial in an old 
 
 18
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 garden. But one of the prettiest legends, 
 surely, is that which Hazlitt discovered one 
 day near Venice : "Horas non numero nisi 
 serenas." 
 
 " 'I count only the hours that are serene,' " 
 he adds. "What a bland and care-dispelling 
 feeling ! How the shadows seem to fade 
 on the dial-plate as the sky lours and time 
 presents only a blank, unless as its progress 
 is marked by what is joyous and all that is 
 not happy descends into oblivion. What a 
 fine lesson is conveyed to the mind to take 
 no note of time but by its benefits, to watch 
 only for the smiles and neglect the frowns 
 of fate, to compose our lives of bright and 
 gentle moments, turning always to the sunny 
 side of things and letting the rest slip from 
 our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten!" 
 
 19
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 The clock, the hour-glass, the vanished 
 clepsydra give abstract hours, without face 
 or form. They are the instruments of the 
 anaemic time of our indoor rooms, of time 
 enslaved and captive; but the sun-dial 
 reveals to us the real, throbbing shadow of 
 the wing of the great god that hovers in the 
 sky. Around the marble disk which adorns 
 the terrace or the crossing of two wide ave- 
 nues and which harmonises so well with the 
 majestic staircases and spreading balus- 
 trades or with the green walls of the thick 
 quickset hedges, we enjoy the fleeting but 
 undeniable presence of the beamy hours. 
 He who has learnt to descry them in space 
 v/ill see them turn by turn touching earth 
 and leaning over the mysterious altar to 
 offer a sacrifice to the god whom man hon- 
 ours, but cannot know. He will see them 
 advancing in diverse and changing gar- 
 
 20
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ments, crowned with fruit, flowers or dew : 
 first, the as yet diaphanous and hardly visi- 
 ble hours of the dawn; next, their sisters of 
 noon, ardent, cruel, resplendent, almost 
 implacable; and, finally, the last hours of 
 twilight, slow and sumptuous, delayed in 
 their progress towards approaching night 
 by the purpling shadow of the trees. 
 
 VI 
 
 The sun-dial alone is worthy to measure 
 the splendour of the months of green and 
 gold. Like profound happiness, it speaks | 
 jio word . Time marches over it in silence, 
 as it passes in silence over the spheres of 
 space; but the church of the neighbouring 
 village lends it at moments its bronze voice; 
 and nothing is so harmonious as the sound 
 of the bell that strikes a chord with the 
 dumb gesture of its shadow marking noon 
 amid the sea of blue. The sun-dial gives a 
 
 21
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 centre and successive names to scattered and 
 nameless joys. All the poetry, all the 
 delights of the country-side, all the mys- 
 teries of the firmament, all the confused 
 thoughts of the tall trees that guard like a 
 sacred treasure the coolness which night has 
 entrusted to their care, all the blissful in- 
 tensity of the corn-fields, plains and hills 
 abandoned without defence to the devour- 
 ing magnificence of the sunlight, all the 
 indolence of the brook flowing between its 
 gentle banks, the drowsiness of the pond 
 covered with drops of sweat formed by the 
 duck-weed, the satisfaction of the house 
 that opens, in its white front, windows 
 greedy to draw in the horizon, the scent of 
 the flowers hastening to finish a day of 
 scorching beauty, the birds singing in the 
 order of the hours to weave garlands of 
 gladness for them in the sky : all these, to- 
 gether with thousands of things and thou- 
 sands of lives that escape our sight, meet 
 
 22
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 and take stock of their continuance around 
 this mirror of time on which the sun, which 
 is but one of the wheels of the huge ma- 
 chine that vainly subdivides eternity, marks 
 with a kindly ray the daily journey which 
 the earth, with all that it carries, performs 
 on the road of the stars. 
 
 23
 
 IMMORTALITY
 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 I 
 
 IN the new era whereupon we are enter- 
 ing, and wherein the religions no longer 
 reply to the great questions of mankind, 
 one of the problems on which we cross- 
 examine ourselves most anxiously is that of 
 the life beyond the tomb. Do all things 
 end at death? Is there an imaginable 
 after-life ? Whither do we go and what be- 
 comes of us ? What awaits us on the other 
 side of the frail illusion which we call 
 existence ? At the moment when our heart 
 stops beating, does matter triumph, or 
 mind; does eternal light begin, or endless 
 darkness? 
 
 Like all that exists, we are imperishable. 
 We cannot conceive that anything should 
 
 27
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 be lost in the universe. By the side of in- 
 finity, it is impossible to imagine a state of 
 nothingness into which an atom of matter 
 can fall and be annihilated. All that is will 
 be eternally; all is; and there is nothing 
 that is not. Otherwise, we should be driven 
 to believe that our brain has nothing in 
 common with the universe which it strives 
 to conceive. We should even have to say 
 that it works in the reverse direction to the 
 universe, which is hardly probable, since it 
 is, after all, perhaps but a sort of reflection 
 of the universe. 
 
 That which appears to perish or, at least, 
 to disappear and follow upon itself is the 
 form and fashion under which we see im- 
 perishable matter ; but we do not know with 
 what realities these appearances correspond. 
 They are the texture of the bandage which 
 is laid upon our eyes and which gives them, 
 under the pressure that blinds them, 
 all the images of our life. Remove that 
 
 28
 
 Immortality 
 
 bandage : what remains ? Do we enter into 
 the reality that undoubtedly exists beyond? 
 Or do the appearances themselves cease to 
 exist for us? 
 
 II 
 
 That the state of nothingness is impossi- 
 ble; that, after our death, all subsists in it- 
 self and nothing perishes: these are things 
 that hardly interest us. The only point that 
 touches us, in this eternal persistence, is the 
 fate of that small part of our life which 
 used to perceive phenomena during our 
 existence. We call it our consciousness or 
 our ego. This ego, as we conceive it when 
 we reflect upon the consequences of its de- 
 struction, jthis ego is neither our mind nor 
 our body, since we recognise that both are 
 waves that flow away and are renewed in- 
 cessantly.! Is it an immovable point which 
 could not be form or substance, for these 
 are always in evolution, nor life, which is 
 
 29
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 the cause or effect of form and substance? 
 In truth, it is impossible for us to appre- 
 hend or define it, to tell where it dwells. 
 When we try to go back to its last source, 
 we find hardly more than a succession of 
 memories, a series of ideas, confused, for 
 that matter, and unsettled, attached to the 
 one instinct of living: a series of habits of 
 our sensibility and of conscious or uncon- 
 scious reactions against the surrounding 
 phenomena. When all is said, the most 
 steadfast point of that nebula is our 
 memory, which seems, on the other hand, to 
 be a somewhat external, a somewhat acces- 
 sory faculty and, in any case, one of the 
 frailest faculties of our brain, one of those 
 which disappear the most promptly at the 
 least disturbance of our health. 
 
 30
 
 Immortality 
 
 III 
 
 It matters not; that uncertain, indis- 
 cernible, fleeting and precarious ego is so 
 much the centre of our being, interests us 
 so exclusively that every reality of our life 
 disappears before this phantom. It is a 
 matter of utter indifference to us that 
 throughout eternity our body or its sub- 
 stance should know every joy and every 
 glory, undergo the most splendid and de- 
 lightful transformations, become flower, 
 perfume, beauty, light, air, star; it is like- 
 wise indifferent to us that our intellect 
 should expand until it mixes with the life of 
 the worlds, understands and governs it. 
 Our instinct is persuaded that all this will 
 not affect us, will give us no pleasure, will 
 not happen to ourselves, unless that memory 
 of a few almost always insignificant facts 
 accompany us and witness those unimag- 
 inable joys, I care not if the loftiest, the 
 
 31
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 freest, the fairest portions of my mind be 
 eternally living and radiant in the supreme 
 gladnesses: they are no longer mine; I do 
 not know them. Death has cut the network 
 of nerves or memories that connected them 
 with I know not what centre wherein lies 
 the sensitive point which I feel to be all 
 myself. They are now set loose, floating in 
 space and time, and their fate is as unknown 
 to me as that of the farthest stars. Any- 
 thing that occurs exists for me only upon 
 condition that I be able to recall it within 
 that mysterious being which is I know not 
 where and precisely nowhere, which I turn 
 like a mirror about this world whose phe- 
 nomena take shape only in so far as they are 
 reflected in it. 
 
 IV 
 
 Thus our longing for immortality destroys 
 itself while expressing itself, since it is on 
 one of the accessory and most transient 
 
 32
 
 Immortality 
 
 parts of our whole life that we base all the 
 interest of our after-life. It seems to us 
 that, if our existence be not continued with 
 the greater part of its drawbacks, of the 
 pettinesses and blemishes that characterise 
 it, nothing will distinguish it from that of 
 other beings; that it will become a drop 
 of ignorance in the ocean of the unknown; 
 and that, thenceforth, all that may ensue 
 will no longer concern us. 
 
 "What immortality can one promise to 
 men who almost necessarily conceive it in . 
 this guise? How can we help it?" asks a 
 puerile, but profound instinct. Any immor- 
 tality that does not drag with it through 
 eternity, like the fetters of the convict that 
 we were, the strange consciousness formed 
 during a few years of movement, any im- 
 mortality that does not bear that indelible 
 mark of our identity is for us as though it 
 were not. Most of the religions have 
 understood this and have taken account of 
 
 33
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 that instinct which desires and at the same 
 time destroys the after-life. It is thus that 
 the Catholic Church, going back to the 
 most primitive hopes, promises us not only 
 the integral preservation of our earthly ego, 
 but even the resurrection of our own flesh. 
 There lies the crux of the riddle. When 
 we demand that this small consciousness, 
 that this sense of a special ego — almost 
 childish and, in any case, extraordinarily 
 limited :jprobably an infirmity of our actual 
 intelligence^— should accompany us into the 
 infinity of time in order that we may under- 
 stand and enjoy it, are we not wishing to 
 perceive an object with the aid of an organ 
 that is not intended to perceive it? Are 
 we not asking that our hand should dis- 
 cover the light or that our eye should take 
 in perfumes? Are we not, on the other 
 hand, acting like a sick man who, in order 
 to recognise himself, to be quite sure that 
 he is himself, should think it necessary to 
 
 34
 
 Immortality- 
 continue his sickness in his health and in 
 the boundless sequence of his days? The 
 comparison, for that matter, is more accu- 
 rate than is the habit of comparisons. Pic- 
 ture a blind man who is also paralysed and 
 deaf. He has been in this condition from 
 his birth and has just attained his thirtieth 
 year. What can the hours have embroi- 
 dered on the imageless web of this poor life ? 
 The unhappy man must have gathered in 
 the depths of his memory, for lack of other 
 recollections, a few wretched sensations of 
 heat and cold, of weariness and rest, of. 
 more or less keen physical sufferings, of 
 hunger and thirst. It is probable that all 
 human joys, all our ideal hopes and dreams 
 of paradise will be reduced for him to the 
 confused sense of well-being that follows 
 the allaying of a pain. This, then, is the 
 only possible equipment of that conscious- 
 ness and that ego. The intellect, having 
 never been invoked from without, will sleep 
 
 35
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 soundly, knowing nothing of itself. Never- 
 theless, the poor wretch will have his little 
 life to which he will cling by bonds as nar- 
 row and eager as though he were the hap- 
 piest of men. He will dread death; and 
 the idea of entering into eternity without 
 carrying with him the emotions and memo- 
 ries of his dark and silent sick-bed will 
 plunge him into the same despair into which 
 we are plunged by the thought of abandon- 
 ing a life of glory, light and love for the 
 icy darkness of the tomb. 
 
 Let us now suppose that a miracle sud- 
 denly quicken his eyes and ears and reveal 
 to him, through the open window at the 
 head of his bed, the dawn rising over the 
 plain, the song of the birds in the trees, the 
 murmuring of the wind in the leaves and 
 of the water against its banks, the ringing 
 
 36
 
 Immortality 
 
 of human voices among the morning hills. 
 Let us suppose also that the same miracle, 
 completing its work, restore the use of his 
 limbs. He rises, stretches his arms to 
 that prodigy which as yet for him possesses 
 neither reality nor name: the light! He 
 opens the door, staggers! out amidst the 
 effulgence and his whole body dissolves in 
 all these marvels. He enters upon an in- 
 effable life, upon a sky whereof no dream 
 could have given him a foretaste; and, by 
 a freak which is readily admissible in this 
 sort of cure, health, introducing him to this 
 inconceivable and unintelligible existence, 
 wipes out in him all memory of days past. 
 
 What will be the state of that ego, of 
 that central focus, the receptacle of all our 
 sensations, the spot in which converges all 
 that belongs in its own right to our life, the 
 supreme point, the "egotic" point of our 
 being, if I may venture to coin a word? 
 Memory being abolished, will that ego re- 
 
 37
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 cover within itself a few traces of the man 
 that was? A new force, the intellect, 
 awaking and suddenly displaying an un- 
 precedented activity, what relation will that 
 intellect keep up with the inert, dull germ 
 whence it has sprung? At what corner of 
 his past will the man clutch to continue his 
 identity? And yet will there not survive 
 within him some sense or instinct, inde- 
 pendent of the memory, the intellect and 
 I know not what other faculties, that will 
 make him recognise that it is indeed in him 
 that the liberating miracle has been 
 wrought, that it is indeed his life and not his 
 neighbour's, transformed, irrecognisable, 
 but substantially the same, that has issued 
 from the silence and the darkness to pro- 
 long itself in harmony and light? Can we 
 picture the disarray, the flux and reflux of 
 that bewildered consciousness? Have we 
 any idea in what manner the ego of yester- 
 day will unite with the ego of to-day and 
 
 38
 
 Immortality 
 
 how the "egotic" point, the sensitive point 
 of the personality, the only point which we 
 are anxious to preserve intact, will bear it- 
 self in that delirium and that upheaval? 
 
 Let us first endeavour to reply with suffi- 
 cient preciseness to this question which 
 comes within the scope of our actual and 
 visible life; and, if we are unable to do this, 
 how can we hope to solve the other problem 
 that presents itself before every man at the 
 moment of his death? 
 
 VI 
 
 This sensitive point, in which the whole 
 problem is summed up, for it is the only 
 one in question and, except in so far as it is 
 concerned, immortality is certain ; this mys- 
 terious point, to which, in the presence of 
 death, we attach so high a value, we lose, 
 strange to say, at any moment in life with- 
 out feeling the least anxiety. Not only is 
 
 39
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 it destroyed nightly in our sleep, but even 
 in waking it is at the mercy of a host of 
 accidents. A wound, a shock, an indis- 
 position, a few glasses of alcohol, a little 
 opium, a little smoke are enough to ob- 
 literate it. Even when nothing impairs it, 
 it is not constantly perceptible. We often 
 need an effort, in turning back upon our- 
 selves to recapture it, to become aware that 
 such or such an event is occurring to us. 
 At the least distraction, a happiness passes 
 beside us without touching us, without 
 yielding up to us the pleasure which it con- 
 tains. One would say that the functions 
 of the organ by which we taste life and 
 bring it home to ourselves are intermittent, 
 often interrupted or suspended and that the 
 presence of our ego, except in pain, is but a 
 rapid and perpetual sequence of departures 
 and returns. What reassures us is that 
 we believe ourselves sure to find it intact on 
 awaking, after the wound, the shock or the 
 
 40
 
 Immortality 
 
 distraction, whereas we are persuaded, so 
 fragile do we feel it to be, that it is bound 
 to disappear for ever in the terrible concus- 
 sion that separates life from death. 
 
 VII 
 
 One foremost truth, pending others which 
 the future will no doubt reveal, is that in 
 these questions of life and death, our imag- 
 ination has remained very childish. Almost 
 every elsewhere, it precedes reason; but 
 here it still loiters over the games of the 
 earliest ages. It surrounds itself with the 
 dreams and the barbarous longings where- 
 with it lulled the hopes and fears of cave- 
 dwelling man. It asks for things that are 
 impossible, because they are too small. It 
 claims privileges which, if obtained, were 
 more to be dreaded than the most enormous 
 disasters with which nihility threatens us. 
 Can we think without shuddering of an 
 
 4i
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 eternity contained wholly within our infini- 
 tesimal actual consciousness? And behold 
 how, in all this, we obey the illogical whims 
 of what used to be called la folle du logis! 
 Which of us, if he went to sleep to-night 
 in the scientific certainty of awaking in a 
 hundred years as he is to-day, with his body 
 intact, even on condition that he lost all 
 memory of his previous life — would those 
 memories not be useless? — which of us 
 would not welcome that secular sleep with 
 the same confidence as the brief, gentle 
 slumbers of his every night? Far from 
 dreading it, would not many hasten to 
 make the trial with eager curiosity? Should 
 we not see numbers of men assail the dis- 
 penser of the fairy sleep with their prayers 
 and implore as a favour what they would 
 deem a miraculous prolongation of their 
 life? And yet, during that sleep, how 
 much would remain and how much of 
 themselves would they find again on 
 
 42
 
 Immortality 
 
 awaking? What link, at the moment when 
 they closed their eyes, would connect them 
 with the being that was to awake with- 
 out memories, unknown, in a new world? 
 Nevertheless, their consent and all their 
 hopes at the beginning of that long night 
 would depend upon that non-existing link. 
 There is, in fact, between real death and 
 this sleep only the difference of that awak- 
 ening deferred for a century, an awakening 
 here as alien to him who had gone to sleep 
 as the birth would be of a posthumous 
 child. 
 
 VIII 
 
 On the other hand, what answer do we 
 make to the question when it has to do not 
 with us, but with the things that breathe 
 with us on earth? Are we concerned, for 
 instance, about the after-life of the animals ? 
 The most faithful, affectionate and intelli- 
 gent dog, once dead, becomes but a repul- 
 
 43
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 sive carcass, which we hasten to get rid of. 
 It does not even seem possible to us to ask 
 ourselves if any part of the already spiritual 
 life which we loved in him subsist else- 
 where in our memory, or if there be another 
 world for dogs. It would appear rather 
 ridiculous to us that time and space should 
 preserve preciously, for all eternity, among 
 the stars and the boundless mansions of the 
 sky, the soul of a poor beast, made up of 
 five or six touching, but very unsophisti- 
 cated habits and of the longing to eat and 
 drink, to sleep warm and to greet his kind 
 in the manner which we know. Besides, 
 what could remain of that soul, composed 
 entirely of the few needs of a rudimentary 
 body, when that body has ceased to exist? 
 Yet by what right do we imagine between 
 ourselves and the animal an abyss that does 
 not exist even between the mineral and the 
 vegetable, the vegetable and the animal? 
 This right to believe ourselves so far, so 
 
 44
 
 Immortality 
 
 different from all that lives upon earth, this 
 pretension to place ourselves in a category 
 and a kingdom to which the very gods 
 whom we have created would not always 
 have access : these are what we must first of 
 all examine. 
 
 IX 
 
 It would be impossible to set forth all the 
 paralogisms of our imagination on the 
 point which we are discussing. Thus, we 
 are pretty easily resigned to the dissolution 
 of our body in the grave. We are not at all 
 anxious that it should accompany us in the 
 infinity of time. Upon reflection, we should 
 even be vexed were it to escort us with its 
 inevitable drawbacks, its faults, its blem- 
 ishes and its absurdities. What we intend 
 to take with us is our soul. But what shall 
 we answer to one who asks us if it be pos- 
 sible to conceive that this soul is anything 
 more than the sum total of our intellectual 
 
 45
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 and moral faculties, added, if you will — to 
 make full measure — to all those which fall 
 within the jurisdiction of our instinct, our 
 unconsciousness, our subconsciousness? 
 Now, when, at the approach of old age, we 
 see these same faculties become impaired 
 in either ourselves or others, we do not dis- 
 tress ourselves, we do not despair any more 
 than we distress ourselves or despair when 
 we behold the slow decline of our physical 
 strength. We keep intact our dim hope of 
 an after-life. It seems to us quite natural 
 that the state of one set of faculties should 
 depend upon the state of the others. Even 
 when the former are completely destroyed 
 in a being whom we love, we do not consider 
 that we have lost him or that he has lost 
 his ego, his moral personality, of which, 
 however, nothing remains. We should not 
 mourn his loss, we should not think that he 
 was no more, if death preserved those 
 faculties in their state of annihilation. But, 
 
 46
 
 Immortality 
 
 if we do not attach a capital importance to 
 the dissolution of our body in the tomb, or 
 to the dissolution of our intellectual faculties 
 during life, what is it that we ask death to 
 spare and of what unrealisable dream do 
 we demand the realisation? 
 
 X 
 
 In truth, we cannot, at least for the mo- 
 ment, imagine an acceptable answer to the 
 question of immortality. Why be aston- 
 ished? Here stands my lamp on my table. 
 It contains no mystery; it is the oldest, the 
 best known and the most familiar object in 
 the house. I see in it oil, a wick, a glass 
 chimney; and all of this forms light. The 
 riddle begins only when I ask myself what 
 this light is, whence it comes when I call it, 
 where it goes when I extinguish it. Then, 
 suddenly, around this small object which I 
 can lift, take to pieces and which might 
 
 47
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 have been fashioned by my hands, the riddle 
 becomes unfathomable. Gather round my 
 table all the men that live upon this earth: 
 not one will be able to tell us what this little 
 flame is which I cause to take birth or to 
 die at my pleasure. And, should one of 
 them venture upon one of those definitions 
 known as scientific, every word of the defini- 
 tion will multiply the unknown and, on 
 every side, open unexpected doors into end- 
 less night. If we know nothing of the es- 
 sence, the destiny, the life of a gleam of 
 familiar light of which all the elements 
 were created by ourselves, of which the 
 source, the proximate causes and the effects 
 are contained within a china bowl, how can 
 we hope to penetrate the mystery of a life 
 of which the simplest elements are situated 
 at millions of years, at thousands of mil- 
 lions of leagues from our intelligence in 
 time and space? 
 
 48
 
 Immortality 
 
 XI 
 
 Since humanity began to exist, it has not 
 advanced a single step on the road of the 
 mystery which we are contemplating. No 
 question which we ask ourselves on the sub- 
 ject touches, on my side, the sphere in 
 which our intelligence is formed and moves. 
 There is perhaps no relation possible or 
 imaginable between the organ that puts the 
 question and the reality that ought to reply 
 to it. The most active and searching en- 
 quiries of late years have taught us nothing. 
 Learned and conscientious psychical soci- 
 eties, notably in England, have got together 
 an imposing collection of irrefutable facts 
 which prove that the life of the spiritual or 
 nervous being can continue for a certain 
 time after the death of the material being. 
 No sincere mind now dreams of denying the 
 possibility of these facts supported by docu- 
 mentary and other evidence as conclusive 
 
 49
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 as that which serves as a basis for our firm- 
 est scientific convictions. But all this merely 
 removes by a few lines, by a few hours the 
 beginning of the mystery. If the ghost of 
 a person whom I love, clearly recognisable 
 and apparently so much alive that I speak 
 to it, enter my room to-night at the very 
 minute when life is quitting the body at 
 a thousand miles from the spot where I am, 
 that is, no doubt, very strange, even as every- 
 thing is strange in a world of which we do 
 not understand the first word; but it shows 
 at most that the soul, the spirit, the breath, 
 the nervous and indiscernible force of the 
 subtlest part of our matter can disengage 
 itself from that matter and survive it for an 
 instant, even as the flame of a lamp which 
 we extinguish sometimes becomes detached 
 from the wick and hovers for a moment in 
 the darkness. Certainly, the phenomenon 
 is an astonishing one; but given the nature 
 of that spiritual force, we ought to be much 
 
 50
 
 Immortality 
 
 more astonished that it is not produced 
 more frequently and at our pleasure, in 
 the fulness of life. In any case, it throws 
 no light upon the question. Never has a 
 single one of those phantasms appeared to 
 have the least consciousness of a new life, 
 of a supraterrestrial life, a life different 
 from that just abandoned by the body 
 whence it emanated. On the contrary, the 
 spiritual life of all of them, at that moment 
 when it ought to be pure, since it is rid of 
 matter, seems greatly inferior to what it was 
 when enveloped in matter. Most of them, 
 in a sort of somnambulistic dulness, pursue 
 mechanically the most insignificant of their 
 accustomed preoccupations. One looks for 
 its hat, which it has left on a chair or table; 
 another is troubled about a small debt or 
 anxious to know the time. And all of 
 them, a little later, at the moment when the 
 real after-life ought to begin, evaporate 
 and disappear for ever. I agree that this 
 
 51
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 proves nothing either for or against the 
 possibility of the after-life. We do not 
 know whether these brief apparitions be the 
 first glimmers of a new or the last of the 
 present existence. Perhaps the dead, for 
 want of a better, thus use and turn to ac- 
 count the last bond that links them and 
 makes them still perceptible to our senses. 
 Perhaps, afterwards, they continue to live 
 around us, but fail, despite all their efforts, 
 to make themselves recognised or to give 
 us an idea of their presence, because we 
 have not the organ needed to perceive them, 
 even as all our efforts would fail to give a 
 man blind from birth the least notion of 
 light or colour. In any case, it is certain 
 that the investigations and the labours of 
 that new science of the "Borderland" as 
 the English call it, have left the problem 
 exactly where it has been since the begin- 
 ning of human consciousness. 
 
 52
 
 Immortality 
 
 XII 
 
 In the invincible ignorance, then, in which 
 we are, our imagination has the choice of 
 our eternal destinies. Now, when we ex- 
 amine the different possibilities, we are 
 compelled to admit that the most beautiful 
 are not the least probable. A first hypothe- 
 sis, to be put aside off-hand, without discus- 
 son, as we have seen, in that of absolute 
 annihilation. A second hypothesis, eagerly 
 cherished by our blind instincts, promises us 
 the more or less integral preservation, 
 through the infinity of time, of our con- 
 sciousness or our actual ego. We have also 
 studied this hypothesis, which is a little 
 more plausible than the first, but at bottom 
 so narrow, so naive, and puerile that, 
 whether for men or for plants and animals, 
 one sees scarcely a means of finding a rea- 
 sonable place for it in boundless space and 
 infinite time. Let us add that, of all our 
 
 53
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 possible destinies, it would be the only one 
 to be really dreaded and that annihilation 
 pure and simple would be a thousand times 
 preferable. 
 
 There remains the double hypothesis of 
 an after-life without consciousness, or with 
 an enlarged and transformed consciousness, 
 of which that which we possess to-day can 
 give us no idea, which it prevents us rather 
 from conceiving, even as our imperfect eye 
 prevents us from conceiving any other light 
 than that which goes from infra-red to 
 ultra-violet, whereas it is certain that those 
 probably prodigious lights would dazzle on 
 every side, in the darkest night, a pupil 
 shaped ^differently from ours. 
 
 Although double at the first view, the 
 hypothesis is soon brought back to the 
 simple question of consciousness. To say, 
 for instance, as we are tempted to do, that 
 an after-life without consciousness is 
 equivalent to annihilation is to settle a priori 
 
 54
 
 Immortality 
 
 and without reflection that problem of con- 
 sciousness which is the chief and most 
 obscure of all the problems that interest us. 
 It is, as all the metaphysicians have pro- 
 claimed, the most difficult that exists, con- 
 sidering that the object of our knowledge 
 is the very thing that is striving to know. 
 What, then, can that mirror ever facing 
 itself do, save reflect itself indefinitely and 
 to no purpose? Nevertheless, in that re- 
 flection incapable of emerging from the 
 multiplication of itself sleeps the only ray 
 that is able to throw light upon all the rest. 
 What is to be done? There is no other 
 means of escaping from one's consciousness 
 than to deny it, to look upon it as an 
 organic disease of the terrestrial intelli- 
 gence, a disease which we must endeavour 
 to cure by an act which must appear to us 
 an act of violent and wilful madness, but 
 which, on the other side of our seeming, is 
 probably an act of sanity. 
 
 55
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 XIII 
 
 But escape is impossible; and we return 
 fatally to prowl around our consciousness 
 based upon our memory, the most precari- 
 ous of all our faculties. It being evident, 
 we say, that nothing can perish, we must 
 needs have lived before our present life. 
 But, as we are unable to connect our previ- 
 ous existence with our actual life, this cer- 
 tainty is as indifferent to us, passes as far 
 from us as all the certainties of our later life. 
 And here we have, before life as after 
 death, the appearance of the mnemonic ego, 
 concerning which it behoves us once more 
 to ask ourselves if what it does during the 
 few days of its activity is really important 
 enough thus to decide, by reference to itself 
 alone, the problem of immortality. From 
 the fact that we enjoy our ego under so 
 exclusive, special, imperfect, fragile and 
 ephemeral a form does it follow that there 
 
 56
 
 Immortality 
 
 is no other mode of consciousness, no other 
 means of enjoying life? A nation of men 
 born blind, to return to the comparison 
 which becomes essential, because it best 
 sums up our situation in the midst of the 
 darkness of the worlds, a nation of men 
 blind from their birth, to whom a solitary 
 traveller should reveal the joys of the light, 
 w ould deny not only that the latter was _pos- 
 si ble, but even imaginabl e. As for our- 
 selves, is it not very nearly certain that we 
 lack here below, among a thousand other 
 senses, a sense superior to that of our 
 mnemonic consciousness, in order to have a 
 fuller and surer enjoyment of our ego? 
 May it not be said that we sometimes catch 
 obscure traces or feeble desires of that bud- 
 ding or atrophied sense, oppressed in any 
 case and almost suppressed by the rule of 
 our terrestrial life, which centralises all the 
 evolutions of our existence upon the same 
 sensitive point? Are there not certain con- 
 
 57
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 fused moments in which, however ruth- 
 lessly, however scientifically we may allow 
 for egoism pursued to its most remote and 
 secret sources, there remains in us some- 
 thing absolutely disinterested that takes 
 pleasure in the happiness of others?"* Is it 
 not also possible that the aimless joys of art, 
 the calm and deep satisfaction into which 
 we are plunged by the contemplation of a 
 beautiful statue, of a perfect building, which 
 does not belong to us, which we shall never 
 see again, which arouses no sensual desire, 
 which can be of no service to us : is it not 
 possible that this satisfaction may be the 
 pale glimmer of a different consciousness 
 that filters through a cranny of our 
 mnemonic consciousness? If we are un- 
 able to imagine that different conscious- 
 ness, that is no reason for denying it. I 
 even believe that it would be wiser to assert 
 that this would be a reason for admitting it. 
 All our life would be spent in the midst of 
 
 58
 
 Immortality 
 
 things which we could never have imagined, 
 if our senses, instead of being given to 
 us all together, had been granted to us one 
 by one and from year to year. For that 
 matter, one of these senses, the sense of 
 generation, which awakens only at the 
 approach of puberty, shows us that the dis- 
 covery of an unexpected world, the displace- 
 ment of all the axes of our life depends 
 upon an accident of our organism. During 
 childhood, we did not suspect the existence 
 of a whole world of passions, of love's 
 frenzies and sorrows which excite "grown- 
 up people." If some garbled echo of those 
 sounds, by chance, happened to reach our 
 innocent and curious ears, we did not suc- 
 ceed in understanding what manner of fury 
 or madness was thus seizing hold of our 
 elders and we promised ourselves, when the 
 time came, to be more sensible, until the 
 day when love unexpectedly appearing dis- 
 turbed the centre of gravity of all our feel- 
 
 59
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ings and of most of our ideas. We see, 
 therefore, that to imagine or not to imag- 
 ine depends upon so little that we_have_no_, 
 ri ffht to doubt the possibility of that wh kh— 
 we canno t conceive. 
 
 XIV 
 
 What keeps and will long still keep us 
 from enjoying the treasures of the universe 
 is the hereditary resignation with which 
 we tarry in the gloomy prison of our senses. 
 Our imagination, as we lead it to-day, ac- 
 commodates itself too readily to that 
 captivity. True, it is the slave of those 
 senses which alone feed it. But it does not 
 sufficiently cultivate within itself the intui- 
 tions and presentiments which tell it that 
 it is kept absurdly captive and that it should 
 seek outlets even beyond the most resplen- 
 dent and infinite circles which it pictures to 
 itself. It is important that our imagination 
 
 60
 
 Immortality 
 
 should say to itself, with ever-increasing 
 seriousness, that the real world begins thou- 
 sands of millions of leagues beyond its most 
 ambitious and daring dreams. Never was 
 it entitled, nay, bound to be more madly 
 reckless than now. All that it succeeds in 
 building and multiplying in the most enor- 
 mous space and time that it is capable of 
 conceiving is as nothing compared with 
 what is. Already the smallest revelations 
 of science in our humble daily life teach it 
 that, even in this modest environment, it 
 is unable to cope with reality, that it is being 
 constantly overwhelmed, bewildered, daz- 
 zled by all the unexpected that lies hidden 
 in a stone, a grain of salt, a glass of water, 
 a plant, an insect. It is already something 
 to be convinced of this, for that places us in 
 a state of mind that watches every occasion 
 to break through the magic circle of our 
 blindness; it persuades us also that we can- 
 not hope to find decisive truths within this 
 
 61
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 circle, that they all lie beyond it. Man, to 
 maintain his sense of proportion, has a need 
 to tell himself at every moment that, were 
 he suddenly placed amid the realities of the 
 universe, he would be exactly comparable 
 with an ant which, knowing only the nar- 
 row pathways, the tiny holes, the ap- 
 proaches and horizons of its ant-heap, 
 should suddenly find itself floating on a 
 straw in the midst of the Atlantic. Pending 
 the time when we shall have left a 
 prison which prevents us from coming into 
 touch with the realities beyond our imagina- 
 tion, we stand a much greater chance of 
 lighting upon a fragment of truth by imag- 
 ining the most unimaginable things than by 
 striving to lead the dreams of that imagina- 
 tion, through the midst of eternity, between 
 the dikes of logic and of actual possibilities. 
 Let us therefore try, whenever a new dream 
 presents itself, to snatch from before our 
 eyes the bandage of our earthly life. Let us 
 
 62
 
 Immortality 
 
 say to ourselves that, among all the possi- 
 bilities which the universe still hides from 
 us, one of the easiest to realise, one of the 
 most probable, the least ambitious and the 
 least disconcerting is certainly the possi- 
 bility of enjoying an existence much more 
 spacious, lofty, perfect, durable and secure 
 than that which is offered to us byour actual 
 consciousness. Admitting this possibility 
 — and there are few as probable — the prob- 
 lem of our immortality is, in principle, 
 solved. It now becomes a question of 
 grasping or foreseeing its ways and, amid 
 the circumstances that interest us the most, 
 of knowing what part of our intellectual 
 and moral acquirements will pass into our 
 eternal and universal life. This is not the 
 work of to-day or to-morrow ; but it would 
 need no incredible miracle to make it the 
 work of some other day. . . . 
 
 63
 
 THE GODS OF WAR
 
 THE GODS OF WAR 
 
 WAR ever offers a magnificent theme 
 for the meditations of men and one 
 that is incessantly renewed. It remains cer- 
 tain, alas, that most of our efforts and in- 
 ventions are always converging towards it, 
 making of it a sort of diabolical mirror in 
 which the progress of our civilisation is re- 
 flected upside down. 
 
 I propose to-day to look at it from only 
 one point of view, in order once again to 
 establish the fact that the more we triumph 
 over the unknown forces the more we yield 
 to them. No sooner have we perceived in 
 the obscurity or the apparent sleep of nature 
 a new glimmer, a new source of energy than 
 we often become its victims and nearly 
 
 67
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 always its slaves. It is as though, thinking 
 to free ourselves, we freed formid- 
 able enemies. True it is that, in the 
 long run, those enemies end by allowing 
 themselves to be led and render us services 
 wherewith we could no longer dispense. 
 But hardly has one of them made its sub- 
 mission before, in the very act of passing 
 under the yoke, it places us on the track of 
 an infinitely more dangerous adversary; and 
 thus our fate becomes more and more glori- 
 ous and more and more uncertain. More- 
 over, among these adversaries are some 
 that seem quite indomitable. But perhaps 
 they remain refractory only because they 
 know better than the others how to appeal 
 to those evil instincts of our heart which 
 delay by many centuries the conquests of 
 our intelligence. 
 
 68
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 II 
 
 This is notably the case with the majority 
 of the inventions that relate to war. We 
 have seen this in recent monstrous conflicts. 
 For the first time since the beginning of his- 
 tory, entirely new forces, mature at last, 
 have emerged from the darkness of a long 
 period of experiment and probation and 
 come to take the place of men on the battle- 
 field. Until the late wars, these forces still 
 hung back, held themselves aloof and acted 
 only from afar. They were reluctant to as- 
 sert themselves; and there was still some 
 connection between their mysterious action 
 and the work of our own hands. The 
 range of the rifle was not greater than that 
 of our eye; and the destructive energy of 
 the most murderous gun, of the most for- 
 midable explosive still preserved human 
 proportions. To-day, we are over- 
 whelmed, we have definitely abdicated, our 
 
 69
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 reign is ended; and behold us, as so many 
 grains of sand, at the mercy of the mon- 
 strous and enigmatic powers whose aid we 
 have dared to invoke. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is true that the part played by man in 
 battle was never preponderating or decisive. 
 Already in the days of Homer, the divini- 
 ties of Olympus mingled with mortals 
 on the plains of Troy and, wrapped in their 
 silvery cloud, which rendered them invisi- 
 ble without hampering their action, pro- 
 tected, dominated or struck terror into the 
 warriors. But these divinities had a limited 
 power and a limited mystery. Their inter- 
 vention, although superhuman, still re- 
 flected the form and psychology of man. 
 Their secrets revolved in the narrow orbit 
 of our own secrets. The heaven 
 
 from which they issued was the heaven of 
 
 70
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 our conception; their passions, their sor- 
 rows, their thoughts were but little juster, 
 loftier or purer than our own. Then, as 
 man developed, as illusion fell from him, 
 as his consciousness increased and the world 
 stood more plainly revealed, the gods that 
 went with him became greater, although 
 more distant; mightier, though more ob- 
 scure. With his increase of knowledge and 
 comprehension, the unknown flooded his 
 domain; and, as he organised and extended 
 his armies, perfected his weapons and, with 
 his growing science, mastered natural 
 forces, so do we find the fortune of battle 
 ignoring the captain and heeding only the 
 group of undecipherable laws which we 
 term chance, or hazard, or destiny. Con- 
 sider, for instance, the admirable picture, so 
 palpably true to life, which Tolstoi draws 
 of the battle of Borodino or the Moskowa, 
 a type of one of the great battles of the Em- 
 pire. The two chiefs, Kutusoff and 
 
 71
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 Napoleon, are so far away from the scene 
 that they perceive only the most insignifi- 
 cant details; they know hardly aught of 
 what is happening. Kutusoff, like the good 
 Sclavonic fatalist that he is, is aware of "the 
 force of circumstance." Sprawling outside 
 a hovel, on a bench over which a carpet has 
 been spread, the unwieldy, one-eyed Rus- 
 sian drowsily awaits the result, giving no 
 orders, content to say "Yes" or "No" to the 
 suggestions that reach him. Napoleon, on 
 the other hand, believes himself able to gov- 
 ern events of which he is not even the wit- 
 ness. He has dictated the arrangements of 
 the battle on the night before; and, from 
 the very first onslaught, owing to that same 
 "force of circumstance" to which Kutusoff 
 pins his faith, not one of these arrange- 
 ments has been or could have been carried 
 into effect. But he clings none the less to 
 the imaginary plan which reality has shat- 
 tered; he believes that he is issuing orders, 
 
 72
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 whereas, in truth, he is merely following — 
 and that too late — the mandates of chance 
 that everywhere arrive in advance of his 
 haggard, hysterical messengers. And the 
 battle pursues the course that nature has 
 traced for it, like the river that flows on its 
 way without heeding the cries of the men 
 on its banks. 
 
 IV 
 
 And yet Napoleon, of all the generals of 
 our later wars, remains the only one who 
 preserved the semblance of human direc- 
 tion. The external forces that seconded and 
 already dominated the efforts of his troops 
 were still in their cradle. But, in our day, 
 what could he do? Would he be able to 
 recapture one hundredth part of the influ- 
 ence which he was able to exercise on the 
 fate of battles? For, to-day, the children of 
 mystery have emerged from childhood; the 
 
 73
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 gods are other that press on our ranks, break 
 our lines and scatter our squadrons, sink our 
 ships and wreck our fortresses. These gods 
 have no longer a human shape; they issue 
 from primitive chaos, far beyond the home 
 of their predecessors; and all their laws, 
 their power, their intentions must be sought 
 outside the circle of our own life, on 
 the other face of our intelligent sphere, in a 
 world that is closely sealed, the world most 
 hostile of all to the destinies of our species: 
 the raw, formless world of inert matter. 
 And it is to this blind and frightful un- 
 known, which has nothing in common with 
 us, which obeys impulses and commands as 
 incomprehensible as those which govern the 
 most fabulously distant stars; it is to this 
 impenetrable, irresistible energy that we 
 confide the exclusive attribute of what is 
 highest in the form of life which we are 
 alone to represent in this world ; it is to these 
 undefinable monsters that we entrust the 
 
 74
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 almost divine mission of establishing the 
 right and separating the just from the un- 
 just. . . . 
 
 What are the powers to which we have 
 thus abandoned our specific privileges? I 
 think at times of a man whose eyes should 
 be able to discern what is floating around 
 us, able to distinguish all the population 
 of this ether which our glances assure us 
 to be transparent and empty, even as the 
 blind, did not other senses undeceive them, 
 might hold the darkness to be empty that 
 fastens upon thier brow. Suppose such a 
 man to pierce the quicksilver of this crystal 
 sphere which we inhabit and which to 
 us reflects only our own face, our own 
 gestures and our own thoughts. Imagine 
 that, one day, passing beyond the appear- 
 ances that imprison us, we were to attain 
 at last the essential realities and that the 
 
 75
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 invisible which, on every side, confines us, 
 fells us and lifts us, ordains our retreat, our 
 pause and our advance were suddenly to 
 strip the covering from the immense, the 
 awful, the inconceivable images that, in 
 some hollow of space, must inevitably be 
 borne by the phenomena and laws of nature 
 whereof we are the frail playthings. — Nor 
 should this be looked on merely as a poet's 
 dream; it is now that we dream, when we 
 tell ourselves that these laws have neither 
 face nor form, when we forget so readily 
 their omnipotent and indefatigable pres- 
 ence; we are now dreaming the puny dream 
 of human illusion, whereas then we should 
 enter the eternal truth of the life without 
 limit in which our own life is bathed. — The 
 spectacle would be appalling: it would be a 
 revelation that would terrify all human 
 energy and paralyse it at the roots of its 
 nothingness. Consider, for instance, among 
 the many illusory triumphs of our blindness, 
 
 76
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 two fleets that prepare for battle. A few 
 thousand men, as imperceptible, as helpless, 
 in their relation to the forces brought into 
 play, as a handful of ants in a virgin forest; 
 a few thousand men flatter themselves that 
 they have enslaved and turned to their pur- 
 pose, to serve an idea entirely foreign to the 
 universe, the most immeasurable and the 
 most dangerous of its laws. Try to provide 
 each of these laws with an aspect, a physiog- 
 nomy proportionate and appropriate to its 
 power and its functions ! And, if you fear 
 to let your mind dwell on what is impos- 
 sible and unimaginable, leave out of count 
 the profoundest, the most august of these 
 laws, among others that of gravitation, 
 which the ships obey as well as the sea that 
 bears them and the earth that bears the sea 
 and the planets that support the earth. You 
 would have to seek so far, in such solitudes, 
 in such infinities, beyond such stars, for the 
 elements that compose it that the wildest 
 
 77
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 dream would pause in helplessness, nor the 
 whole universe suffice to lend a mask. 
 
 VI 
 
 Let us, therefore, take those laws alone 
 which are more limited, if there be any 
 that have limits; those which are nearer 
 to us, if there be any that are near. Let 
 us take only the laws which these ships 
 imagine to be submissively confined in their 
 flanks: the laws which we regard as espe- 
 cially docile and the daughters of our 
 achievement. What monstrous form, what 
 gigantic shadow shall we attribute, to take 
 one instance alone, to the power of ex- 
 plosives, those recent and supreme gods, 
 which have just dethroned, in the temples 
 of war, all the gods of the past? With what 
 family of terrors, what unforeseen group of 
 mysteries shall we connect them ? Melinite, 
 dynamite, panclastite, cordite and roburite, 
 
 78
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 lyddite and ballistite, O ye indescribable 
 spectres, by whose side the old black pow- 
 der that struck terror into our fathers and 
 even the mighty thunderbolt, once held the 
 most awful symbol of divine anger, become 
 mere gossipy, good-natured old women, a 
 little ready to strike, perhaps, but almost 
 inoffensive, almost maternal : of your count- 
 less secrets not even the most superficial has 
 been laid bare; and the chemist who com- 
 poses your slumber, even as the engineer 
 or artilleryman who awakens you, is in total 
 ignorance of your nature, your origin, your 
 soul, the springs of your incredible bound 
 and the eternal laws which you so suddenly 
 obey! Are you the result of things im- 
 prisoned since the beginning of time; are 
 you the gleaming transfiguration of death, 
 the awful gladness of the palpitating void; 
 are you eruption of hatred or excess of joy? 
 Are you a new form of life and so ardent 
 that you consume in a second the patience 
 
 79
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 of twenty centuries ? Are you a flame from 
 the enigma of the worlds that has found a 
 fissure in the walls of silence that enclose it? 
 Are you an audacious loan from the reserve 
 of energy that supports our earth in space? 
 Do you, for that unequalled bound of yours 
 towards a new destiny, gather up, in the 
 twinkling of an eye, all that has been stored, 
 all that has been gathered and prepared in 
 the secret of rocks and seas and mountains? 
 Are you soul or matter or a third state still 
 unknown to life? Whence do you derive 
 your destructive passion, where do you rest 
 the lever that splits a continent, whence 
 does the impetus depart that exceeds the 
 zone of the stars whereon the earth, your 
 mother, exercises her will? 
 
 To all these questions the man of science 
 who creates you will reply gravely that your 
 force "is due to the sudden production of a 
 great volume of gas in a space too confined 
 to contain it beneath the atmospheric pres- 
 
 80
 
 The Gods of War 
 
 sure." All is now explained, all is clear. 
 We attain at once the very depths of truth; 
 and here, as in all things, know exactly how 
 matters stand. . . . 
 
 81
 
 OUR SOCIAL DUTY
 
 OUR SOCIAL DUTY 
 
 LET us start fairly with the great truth : 
 for those who possess there is only one 
 certain duty, which is to strip themselves of 
 what they have, so as to bring themselves 
 into the condition of the mass that possesses 
 nothing. It is understood, in every clear- 
 thinking conscience, that no more impera- 
 tive duty exists; but, at the same time, it is 
 admitted that this duty, for lack of courage, 
 is impossible of accomplishment. For the 
 rest, in the heroic history of the duties, even 
 at the most ardent periods, even at the 
 beginning of Christianity and in the ma- 
 jority of the religious orders that made a 
 special cult of poverty, this is perhaps the 
 only duty that has never been completely 
 
 85
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 fulfilled. It behoves us, therefore, when 
 considering our subsidiary duties, to remem- 
 ber that the essential one has been know- 
 ingly evaded. Let this truth govern us. 
 Let us not forget that we are speaking in 
 its shadow and that our boldest, our utmost 
 steps will never lead us to the point at which 
 we ought to have been from the first. 
 
 II 
 
 Since it appears that we have here to do 
 with an absolute impossibility before which 
 it were idle to make any further display of 
 astonishment, let us accept human nature as 
 we find it. Let us, therefore, seek on other 
 roads than the one direct road — seeing that 
 we have not the strength to travel by it — 
 that which, in the absence of this strength, 
 is able to nourish our conscience. There 
 are thus, not to speak of the great question, 
 two or three others which well-disposed 
 
 86
 
 Our Social Duty- 
 hearts are constantly setting to themselves. 
 What are we to do in the actual state of our 
 society ? Must we side, a priori, systemati- 
 cally, with those who are disorganising it, or 
 join the camp of those who are struggling 
 to maintain its economy? Is it wiser not 
 to bind one's choice, to defend by turns that 
 which seems reasonable and opportune in 
 either party? It is certain that a sincere 
 conscience can find, here or there, the where- 
 withal to satisfy its activity or to lull its 
 reproaches. That is why, in the presence of 
 this choice which to-day becomes incumbent 
 upon every upright intelligence, it is not 
 unprofitable to weigh the pro and the contra 
 more simply than after our usual fashion 
 and rather in the manner of the unbiased 
 denizen of some neighbouring planet. 
 
 87
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 III 
 
 Let us not resume all the traditional 
 objections, but only those which can be 
 seriously defended. We are first confronted 
 with the oldest of them, which maintains 
 that inequality is inevitable, being in accord- 
 ance with the laws of nature. This is true; 
 but the human race appears not improbably 
 created to raise itself above certain of the 
 laws of nature. Its very existence would be 
 imperilled if it abandoned its intention to 
 surmount a number of these laws. It is 
 in accordance with its particular nature to 
 obey other laws than those of its animal 
 nature and the rest. Moreover, this ob- 
 jection has long been classed among those 
 whose principle is untenable and would lead 
 to the massacre of the weak, the sick, the 
 old and so forth. 
 
 We are next told that it is right, in order 
 to hasten the triumph of justice, that the 
 
 88
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 best among us should not prematurely strip 
 themselves of their arms, the most effi- 
 cacious of which are exactly wealth and 
 leisure. Here the necessity of the great 
 sacrifice is fairly well recognised, and only 
 the question of its opportuneness remains. 
 We agree, provided that it be well under- 
 stood that this wealth and leisure serve 
 solely to hasten the steps of justice. 
 
 Another conservative argument worthy of 
 attention declares that, man's first duty being 
 to avoid violence and bloodshed, it is indis- 
 pensable that the social evolution should not 
 be too rapid, that it should ripen slowly, that 
 it is important to temper it while the mass 
 is being enlightened and borne gradually 
 and — without serious upheavals towards a 
 liberty and a fulness of possessions which, at 
 this moment, would unchain only its worst 
 instincts. This again is true; nevertheless, it 
 would be interesting to calculate, since we 
 can reach the best only through the bad, 
 
 89
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 whether the evils of a sudden, radical and 
 bloody revolution outweigh those which are 
 perpetuated in the slower evolution. It were 
 well to ask ourselves whether there be not an 
 advantage in acting with all speed; whether, 
 when all is told, the suffering of those who 
 now wait for justice be not more serious 
 than that which the privileged class of to- 
 day would have to undergo for the space of 
 some weeks or months. We are too ready 
 to forget that the headsmen of misery are 
 less noisy, less theatrical, but infinitely more 
 numerous, cruel and active than those of the 
 most terrible revolutions. 
 
 IV 
 
 We come at length to the last and perhaps 
 the most disturbing argument : humanity, 
 we are told, has for more than a century 
 been passing through the most fruitful and 
 victorious, probably the climacteric years of 
 
 90
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 its destiny. It seems, if we consider its past, 
 to be in the decisive phase of its evolution. 
 One would think, from certain indications, 
 that it is nigh upon attaining its apogee. 
 It is traversing a period of inspiration where- 
 with none other is historically to be com- 
 pared. A trifle, a last effort, a flash of light 
 which shall connect or emphasise the dis- 
 coveries, the intuitions scattered or held in 
 suspense alone separates it, perhaps, from 
 the great mysteries. It has lately touched 
 upon problems whose solution, at the cost 
 of the hereditary enemy, that is of the great 
 unknown phenomenon of the universe, 
 would probably render useless all the sacri- 
 fices which justice demands of men. Is it not 
 dangerous to stop this flight, to disturb this 
 precious, precarious and supreme minute? 
 Admitting even that what is gained can no 
 longer be lost, as in the earlier upheavals, 
 it is nevertheless to be feared lest the vast 
 disorganisation required by equity should 
 
 91
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 put an abrupt end to this happy period; 
 and it is not sure but that its reappearance 
 might be long delayed, the laws which 
 preside over the inspiration of the genius 
 of the race being as capricious, as unstable 
 as those which preside over the inspiration 
 of the genius of the individual. 
 
 V 
 
 This is, as I have said, perhaps the most 
 disquieting argument. But there is no 
 doubt that it attaches too great an impor- 
 tance to a somewhat uncertain danger. 
 Moreover, prodigious compensations would 
 attend this brief interruption of the victory 
 of humanity. Can we foresee what will 
 happen when the human race as a whole 
 will be taking part in the intellectual labour 
 which is the labour proper to our species? 
 To-day, hardly one brain in ten thousand 
 exists in conditions entirely favourable to 
 
 92
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 its activity. There is, at this moment, a 
 monstrous waste of spiritual force. Idle- 
 ness at the top depresses as many mental 
 energies as excess of manual labour anni- 
 hilates below. It is incontestable that, when 
 it shall be given to all men to apply them- 
 selves to the task at present reserved for a 
 few favourites of chance, humanity will in- 
 crease a thousandfold its prospects of 
 attaining the great mysterious aim. 
 
 Here, I think, we have the best of the 
 pro and the contra, the most reasonable 
 reasons that can be invoked by those who 
 are in no hurry to end the matter. In the 
 midst of these reasons stands the huge 
 monolith of injustice. There is no need 
 to let it defend itself. It oppresses con- 
 sciences, limits intelligences. Wherefore 
 there can be no question of not destroying 
 it; all that is asked of those who would 
 overthrow it is a few years of patience, so 
 that, when its surroundings have been 
 
 93
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 cleared, its fall may entail fewer disasters. 
 Are we to grant these years? And which 
 among these arguments in favour of haste 
 or of waiting would be the object of the 
 most straightforward choice? 
 
 VI 
 
 Do the pleas for a few years of respite 
 appear to you sufficient? They are pre- 
 carious enough; but, even so, it would not 
 be fair to condemn them without consider- 
 ing the problem from a higher standpoint 
 than that of pure reason. This point must 
 always be sought as soon as we have to do 
 with questions that go beyond human ex- 
 perience. It might easily be maintained, 
 for instance, that the choice would not be 
 the same for all. The race, which probably 
 has an infinite consciousness of its destinies 
 which no individual can grasp, would have 
 very wisely apportioned among men the 
 
 94
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 parts that suit them in the lofty drama of 
 its evolution. For reasons which we do not 
 always understand, it is doubtless necessary 
 that the race should progress slowly: that 
 is why the enormous mass of its body at- 
 taches it to the past and the present; and 
 very upright intelligences may be comprised 
 within this mass, even as it is possible for 
 greatly inferior minds to escape from it. 
 Whether there be satisfaction or unselfish 
 discontent on the side of the darkness or of 
 the light matters little; it is often a ques- 
 tion of predestination and the distribu- 
 tion of characters rather than of enquiry. 
 However this may be, for us, whose reason 
 already judges the weakness of the argu- 
 ments of the past, it would be a fresh 
 motive for impatience. Let us admit, in 
 addition, its very plausible force. The fact, 
 therefore, that to-day does not satisfy us is 
 enough to make it our duty, our organic 
 duty, so to speak, to destroy all that sup- 
 
 95
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ports it, in order to make ready for the 
 arrival of to-morrow. Even if we were to 
 perceive very clearly the dangers and draw- 
 backs of too prompt an evolution, it is 
 requisite, in order that we should loyally 
 fulfil the function assigned to us by the 
 genius of the race, that we should take no 
 notice of any patience, any circumspection. 
 In the social atmosphere, we represent the 
 oxygen: if we behave in it like the inert 
 azote, we betray the mission which nature 
 has entrusted to us; and this, in the scale 
 of the crimes that remain to us, is the 
 gravest and most unpardonable of treasons. 
 It is not ours to preoccupy our minds with 
 the often grievous consequences of our haste : 
 this is not written in our part, and to take 
 account of it would be to add to that part 
 discordant words which are not in the 
 authentic text dictated by nature. Humanity 
 has appointed us to gather that which stands 
 on the horizon. It has given us instructions 
 
 96
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 which it does not behove us to discuss. It 
 distributes its forces as it thinks right. At 
 every cross-way on the road that leads to 
 the future, it has placed, against each of us, 
 ten thousand men to guard the past; let us 
 therefore have no fear lest the fairest towers 
 of former days be insufficiently defended. 
 We are only too naturally inclined to tem- 
 porise, to shed tears over inevitable ruins: 
 this is the greatest of our trespasses. The 
 least that the most timid among us can do 
 — and already they are very near committing 
 treachery — is not to add to the immense 
 deadweight which nature drags along. 
 But let the others follow blindly the inmost 
 impulse of the power that urges them on. 
 Even if their reason were to approve none 
 of the extreme measures in which they take 
 part, let them act and hope beyond their 
 reason; for in all things, because of the 
 call of the earth, we must aim higher than 
 the object which we aspire to attain. 
 
 97
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 VII 
 
 Let us not fear lest we be drawn too far; 
 and let no reflection, however just, break or 
 temper our ardour. Our future excesses are 
 essential to the equilibrium of life. There 
 are men enough about us whose exclusive 
 duty, whose most precise mission it is to 
 extinguish the fires which we kindle. Let us 
 go always to the most extreme limits of our 
 thoughts, our hopes and our justice. Let 
 us not persuade ourselves that these efforts 
 are incumbent only upon the best of us: 
 this is not true and the humblest among 
 us that foresee the coming of a dawn which 
 they do not understand must await it at the 
 very summit of themselves. Their presence 
 on these intermediary tops will fill with 
 living substance the dangerous intervals be- 
 tween the first heights and the last and will 
 maintain the indispensable communications 
 
 between the vanguard and the mass. 
 
 98
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 Let us think sometimes of the great in- 
 visible ship that carries our human destinies 
 upon eternity. Like the vessels of our con- 
 fined oceans, she has her sails and her bal- 
 last. The fear that she may pitch or roll on 
 leaving the roadstead is no reason for in- 
 creasing the weight of the ballast by stowing 
 the fair, white sails in the depths of the 
 hold. They were not woven to moulder 
 side by side with cobble-stones in the dark. 
 Ballast exists everywhere: all the pebbles 
 of the harbour, all the sand on the beach 
 will serve for it. But sails are rare and 
 precious things: their place is not in the 
 murk of the well, but amid the light of the 
 tall masts, where they will collect the winds 
 of space. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Let us not say to ourselves that the best 
 truth always lies in moderation, in the 
 decent average. This would perhaps be so 
 
 99
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 if the majority of men did not think, did not 
 hope upon a much lower plane than is need- 
 ful. That is why it behoves the others to 
 think and hope upon a higher plane than 
 seems reasonable. The average, the decent 
 moderation of to-day will be the leasthuman 
 of things to-morrow. At the time of the 
 Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good 
 sense and of the just medium was certainly 
 that people ought not to burn too large a 
 number of heretics; extreme and unreason- 
 able opinion obviously demanded that they 
 should burn none at all. It is the same 
 to-day with the question of marriage, of 
 love, of religion, of criminal justice and so 
 on. Has not mankind yet lived long enough 
 to realise that it is always the extreme idea, 
 that is the highest idea, the idea at the 
 summit of thought, that is right? At the 
 present moment, the most reasonable opin- 
 ion on the subject of our social question 
 invites us to do all that we can gradually 
 
 IOO
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 to diminish inevitable inequalities and dis- 
 tribute happiness more equitably. Extreme 
 opinion demands instantly integral division, 
 the suppression of property, obligatory 
 labour and the rest. We do not yet know 
 how these demands will be realised; but it 
 is already quite certain that very simple 
 circumstances will one day make them ap- 
 pear as natural as the suppression of the 
 right of primogeniture or of the privileges 
 of the nobility. It is important, in these 
 questions of the duration of a species and 
 not of a people or an individual, that we 
 should not limit ourselves to the experience 
 of history. Anything that it confirms or 
 denies moves in an insignificant circle. The 
 truth, in this case, lies much less in our 
 reason, which is always turned towards the 
 past, than in our imagination, which sees 
 farther than the future. 
 
 IOI 
 
 7
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 IX 
 
 Let us reason, then, strive to soar above 
 experience. This is easy for young people ; 
 but it is salutary that ripe age and old age 
 should learn to raise themselves to the 
 luminous ignorance of youth. We should 
 guard beforehand, as the years pass, against 
 the dangers which our confidence in the race 
 must run because of the great number of 
 malignant men whom we have encountered 
 in it. Let us continue, in spite of all, to 
 act, to love and to hope as though we 
 had to do with an ideal humanity. This 
 ideal is only a vaster reality than that 
 which we behold. The failings of indi- 
 viduals no more impair the general purity 
 and innocence than the waves on the sur- 
 face, according to the aeronauts, when seen 
 from a certain height, trouble the profound 
 limpidity of the sea. 
 
 102
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 X 
 
 Let us listen only to the experience that 
 urges us on; it is always higher than that 
 which throws or keeps us back. Let us 
 reject all the counsels of the past that do 
 not turn us towards the future. This is 
 what was admirably understood, perhaps 
 for the first time in history, by certain men 
 of the French Revolution; and that is why 
 this revolution is the one that did the great- 
 est and the most lasting things. Here this 
 experience teaches us that, contrary to all 
 that occurs in the affairs of daily life, it is 
 above all important to destroy. In every 
 social progress, the great and the only diffi- 
 cult work is the destruction of the past. We 
 need not be anxious about what we shall 
 place in the stead of the ruins. The force 
 of things and of life will undertake the 
 rebuilding. It is but too eager to recon- 
 struct; and we should not be doing well 
 
 103
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 to aid it in its precipitate task. Let us, 
 therefore, not hesitate to employ our de- 
 structive powers even to excess : nine-tenths 
 of the violence of our blows is lost amid 
 the inertness of the mass, even as the stroke 
 of the heaviest hammer is dispersed in a 
 large stone and becomes, so to speak, imper- 
 ceptible to a child that holds the stone in 
 its hand. 
 
 XI 
 
 And let us not fear lest we should go too 
 fast. If, at certain hours, we seem to be 
 rushing at a headlong and dangerous pace, 
 this is to counterbalance unjustifiable de- 
 lays and to make up for time lost during 
 centuries of inactivity. The evolution of 
 our world continues during these periods 
 of inertia ; and it is probably necessary that 
 humanity should have reached a certain de- 
 termined point of its ascent at the moment 
 of a certain sidereal phenomenon, of a cer- 
 
 104
 
 Our Social Duty 
 
 tain obscure crisis of the planet, or even 
 of the birth of a certain man. It is the 
 instinct of the race that decides these 
 matters, it is its destiny that speaks; and, if 
 this instinct or this destiny be wrong, it is 
 not for us to interfere; for there is nothing 
 above it or above ourselves to correct its 
 error. 
 
 105
 
 OUR ANXIOUS MORALITY
 
 OUR ANXIOUS MORALITY 
 
 \ X 7"E have arrived at a stage of human 
 * * evolution that must be almost un- 
 precedented in history. A large por- 
 tion of mankind — and just that portion 
 which corresponds with the part that has 
 hitherto created the events of which we 
 know with some certainty — is gradually 
 forsaking the religion in which it has lived 
 for nearly twenty centuries. 
 
 For a religion to become extinct is no new 
 thing. It must have happened more than 
 once in the night of time; and the annal- 
 ists of the end of the Roman Empire make 
 us assist at the death of paganism. But, 
 until now, men passed from a crumbling 
 
 temple into one that was building; they 
 
 109
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 left one religion to enter another; whereas 
 we are abandoning ours to go nowhither. 
 That is the new phenomenon, with the un- 
 known consequences, wherein we live. 
 
 II 
 
 It is not necessary to recall the fact that 
 religions have always, through their moral- 
 ity and their promises extending beyond 
 the tomb, exercised an enormous influence 
 upon men's happiness, although we have 
 seen some — and very important ones, such 
 as paganism — which provided neither those 
 promises nor any morality properly so 
 called. We will not speak of the prom- 
 ises of our own religion, for they are the 
 first to perish with the faith, whereas we 
 are still living in the monuments erected by 
 the morality born of that departing faith. 
 But we feel that, in spite of the supports 
 of habit, these monuments are yawning 
 
 no
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 over our heads and that already, in many 
 places, we are shelterless under an unfore- 
 seen heaven that has ceased to give its 
 orders. Thus we are assisting at the more 
 or less unconscious and feverish elabora- 
 tion of a morality that is premature, be- 
 cause we feel it to be indispensable, made 
 up of remnants gathered from the past, of 
 conclusions borrowed from ordinary good 
 sense, of a few laws half perceived by science 
 and, lastly, of certain extreme intuitions of 
 our bewildered intelligence, which returns, 
 by a circuitous road through a new mystery, 
 to old-time virtues which good sense alone 
 is not sufficient to sustain. It may be inter- 
 esting to try to seize the first reflexes of that 
 elaboration. The hour seems to be striking 
 at which many will ask themselves whether, 
 by continuing to practise a lofty and noble 
 morality in an environment that obeys other 
 laws, they be not disarming themselves too 
 
 artlessly and playing the ungrateful part of 
 
 in
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 dupes. They wish to know if the motives 
 that still attach them to the older virtues are 
 not merely sentimental, traditional and 
 illusionary; and they seek somewhat vainly 
 within themselves for the supports which 
 reason may yet lend them. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Placing on one side the artificial heaven 
 in which those who remain faithful to the 
 religious certainties take shelter, we find 
 that the upper currents of civilised human- 
 ity waver, seemingly, between two contrary 
 doctrines. For that matter, these two 
 parallel, but inverse doctrines have through 
 all time, like hostile streams, crossed the 
 fields of human morality. But their bed 
 was never so clearly, so rigidly dug out as 
 now. That which in other days was no 
 more than altruism and egoism instinctive 
 and vague, with waves that often mingled, 
 
 112
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 has of late become altruism and egoism 
 absolute and systematic. At their sources, 
 which are not renewed, but shifted, stand 
 two men of genius : Tolstoi and Nietzsche. 
 But, as I have said, it is only seemingly that 
 these two doctrines divide the world of 
 ethics. The real drama of the modern 
 conscience is not enacted at either of these 
 too extreme points. Lost in space, they 
 mark little more than two illusive goals, 
 which nobody dreams of attaining. One of 
 these doctrines flows violently back towards 
 a past that never existed in the shape in 
 which that doctrine pictures it; the other 
 ripples cruelly towards a future which there 
 is nothing to foretell. Between these two 
 dreams, which envelop and go beyond it on 
 every side, passes the reality of which they 
 have failed to take account. In this reality, 
 whereof each of us carries the image within 
 himself, it behoves us to study the forma- 
 tion of the morality on which our latter-day 
 
 113
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 life rests. Need I add that, when employ- 
 ing the term "morality," I do not mean to 
 speak of the practices of daily existence, 
 which spring from custom and fashion, but 
 of the great laws that determine the inner 
 man? 
 
 IV 
 
 Our morality is formed in our conscious 
 or unconscious reason, which, from this 
 point of view, may be divided into three 
 regions. Right at the bottom lies the 
 heaviest, the densest and the most general, 
 which we will call "common sense." A 
 little higher, already striving towards ideas 
 of immaterial usefulness and enjoyment, is 
 what might be called "good sense." Lastly, 
 at the top, admitting, but controlling as 
 severely as possible the claims of the 
 imagination, of the feelings and of all that 
 connects our conscious life with the uncon- 
 scious and with the unknown forces within 
 
 114
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 and without, lies the indeterminate part of 
 that same total reason, to which we will 
 give the name of "mystic reason." 
 
 It is not necessary to set forth at length 
 the morality of "common sense," of that 
 good common sense which exists in all of us, 
 in the best and the worst of us alike, and 
 which springs up spontaneously on the ruins 
 of the religious idea. It is the morality of 
 each man for himself, of practical, solid 
 egoism, of every material instinct and en- 
 joyment. He who starts from common 
 sense considers that he possesses but one 
 certainty: his own life. In that life, going 
 to the bottom of things, are but two real 
 evils: sickness and poverty; and but two 
 genuine and irreducible boons: health and 
 riches. All other realities, happy or un- 
 happy, flow from these. The rest — joys and 
 
 "5
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 sorrows born of the feelings and the pas- 
 sions — is imaginary, because it depends 
 upon the idea which we form of Ft. Our 
 right to enjoyment is limited only by the 
 similar right of those who live at the same 
 time as ourselves; and we have to respect 
 certain laws established in the very interest 
 of our peaceful enjoyment. With the res- 
 ervation of these laws, we admit no con- 
 straint; and our conscience, so far from 
 trammelling the movements of our selfish- 
 ness, must, on the contrary, approve of 
 their triumphs, seeing that these triumphs 
 are what is most in accordance with the in- 
 stinctive and logical duties of life. 
 
 There we have the first stratum, the first 
 state of all natural morality. It is a state 
 beyond which many men, after the complete 
 death of the religious ideas, will never go. 
 
 116
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 VI 
 
 As for "good sense," which is a little less 
 material, a little less animal, it looks at 
 things from a slightly higher standpoint 
 and, consequently, sees a little farther. It 
 soon perceives that niggardly common sense 
 leads an obscure, confined and wretched life 
 in its shell. It observes that man is no more 
 able than the bee to remain solitary and that 
 the life which he shares with his fellows, 
 in order to expand freely and completely, 
 cannot be reduced to an unjust and pitiless 
 struggle or to a mere exchange of services 
 grudgingly rewarded. In its relations to- 
 wards others, it still makes selfishness its 
 starting-point; but this selfishness is no 
 longer purely material. It still considers 
 utility, but already admits its spiritual or 
 sentimental side. It knows joys and sor- 
 rows, affections and antipathies, the objects 
 of which may exist in the imagination. 
 
 117
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 Thus understood and capable of rising to 
 a certain height above the conclusions of 
 material logic — without losing sight of its 
 interest — it appears beyond the reach of 
 every objection. It flatters itself that it is 
 in solid occupation of all reason's summits. 
 It even makes a few concessions to that 
 which does not perceptibly fall within the 
 latter's domain, I mean to the passions, the 
 feelings and all the unexplained things that 
 surround them. It must needs make these 
 concessions, for, if not, the gloomy caves in 
 which it would shut itself would be no more 
 habitable than those in which dull com- 
 mon sense leads its stupefied existence. But 
 these very concessions call attention to the 
 unlawfulness of its claims to busy itself 
 with morality once that the latter has gone 
 beyond the ordinary practices of daily life. 
 
 118
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 VII 
 
 Indeed, what can there be in common be- 
 tween good sense and the stoical idea of 
 duty, for instance? They inhabit two dif- 
 ferent and almostuncommunicating regions. 
 Good sense, when it claims alone to pro- 
 mulgate the laws that form the inner man, 
 ought to meet with the same resistance and 
 the same obstacles as those against which it 
 strikes in one of the few regions which it 
 has not yet reduced to slavery : the region of 
 aesthetics. Here it is very happily consulted 
 on all that concerns the starting-point and 
 certain great lines, but most imperiously 
 ordered to hold its peace so soon as the 
 achievement and the supreme and mysteri- 
 ous beauty of the work come into question. 
 But, whereas in aesthetics it resigns itself 
 easily enough to silence, in morality it 
 wishes to lord over all things. It were well, 
 
 therefore, to put it back once for all into 
 
 119
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 its lawful place in the generality of the 
 faculties that makes up our human person. 
 
 VIII 
 
 One of the features of our time is the 
 ever-increasing and almost exclusive confi- 
 dence which we place in those parts of our 
 intelligence which we have just described as 
 common sense and good sense. It was not 
 always thus. Formerly, man based upon 
 good sense only a somewhat restricted and 
 the vulgarest portion of his life. The rest 
 had its foundations in other regions of our 
 mind, notably in the imagination. The relig- 
 ions, for instance, and with them the 
 brightest part of the morality of which they 
 are the chief sources, always rose up at a 
 great distance from the tiny limits of good 
 sense. This was excessive; but the ques- 
 tion is whether the present contrary excess 
 is not as blind. The enormous strides made 
 in the practice of our life by certain me- 
 
 120
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 chanical and scientific laws make us allow to 
 good sense a preponderance to which it 
 remains to be proved that this same good 
 sense is entitled. The apparently incontest- 
 able, yet perhaps illusory logic of certain 
 phenomena with which we believe ourselves 
 acquainted makes us forget the possible 
 illogicality of millions of other phenomena 
 which we do not yet know. Nothing 
 assures us that the universe obeys the laws 
 of human logic. It would even be surpris- 
 ing if this were so; for the laws of 
 our good sense are the fruit of an experi- 
 ence which is insignificant when we compare 
 it with what we do not know. "There is 
 no effect without a cause," says our good 
 sense, to take the tritest instance. Yes, 
 in the little circle of our material life, that 
 is undeniable and all-sufficing. But, so 
 soon as we emerge from this infinitesimal 
 circle, the saying no longer answers to any- 
 thing, seeing that the notions of cause and 
 
 121
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 effect are alike unknowable in a world 
 where all is unknown. Now our life, from 
 the moment when it raises itself a little, is 
 constantly issuing from the small material 
 and experimental circle and, consequently, 
 from the domain of good sense. Even in 
 the visible world which serves it for a model 
 in our mind, we do not observe that it 
 reigns undivided. Around us, in her most 
 constant and most familiar manifestations, 
 nature very rarely acts according to good 
 sense. What could be more senseless than 
 her waste of existences? What more un- 
 reasonable than those billions of germs 
 blindly squandered to achieve the chance 
 birth of a single being? What more illog- 
 ical than the untold and useless compli- 
 cation of her means (as, for instance, in 
 the life of certain parasites and the im- 
 pregnation of flowers by insects) to attain 
 the simplest ends? What madder than 
 those thousands of worlds which perish in 
 
 122
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 space without accomplishing a single work? 
 All this goes beyond our good sense and 
 shows it that it is not in agreement with 
 general life and that it is almost isolated in 
 the universe. Needs must it argue against 
 itself and recognise that we shall not give 
 it in our life, which is not isolated, the 
 preponderant place to which it aspires. This 
 is not to say that we will abandon it where 
 it is of use to us; but it is well to know 
 that good sense cannot suffice for every- 
 thing, being itself almost nothing. Even as 
 there exists without ourselves a world that 
 goes beyond it, so there exists within our- 
 selves another that exceeds it. It is in its 
 place and performs a humble and blessed 
 work in its little village; but it must not aim 
 at becoming the master of the great cities 
 and the sovereign of the mountains and the 
 seas. Now the great cities, the seas and the 
 mountains occupy infinitely more space 
 within us than the little village of our prac- 
 
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 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 tical existence, which is the necessary agree- 
 ment upon a small number of inferior, 
 sometimes doubtful, but indispensable 
 truths and nothing more. It is a bond 
 rather than a support. We must remember 
 that nearly all our progress has been made 
 in despite of the sarcasms and curses with 
 which good sense has received the unrea- 
 sonable, but fertile hypotheses of the imag- 
 ination. Amid the moving and eternal 
 waves of a boundless universe, let us not, 
 therefore, hold fast to our good sense as 
 though to the one rock of salvation. Bound 
 to that rock, immovable through every age 
 and every civilisation, we should do nothing 
 of that which we ought to do, become noth- 
 ing of that which we may perhaps become. 
 
 IX 
 
 Until the present time, this question of a 
 
 morality limited by good sense possessed no 
 
 124
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 great importance. It did not stay the de- 
 velopment of certain aspirations, of certain 
 forces that have always been considered the 
 finest and noblest to be found in man. The 
 religions completed the interrupted work. 
 To-day, feeling the danger of its limita- 
 tions, the morality of good sense, which 
 would like to become the general morality, 
 seeks to extend itself as far as possible in 
 the direction of justice and generosity, to 
 find, in a superior interest, reasons for being 
 disinterested, in order to fill up a portion of 
 the abyss that separates it from those inde- 
 structible forces and aspirations. But there 
 are points which it is unable to exceed with- 
 out denying itself, without destroying itself 
 at its very source. After these points, which 
 are just those at which the great useless 
 virtues begin, what guide remains to us? 
 
 125
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 X 
 
 We shall see presently if it be possible to 
 answer this question. But, even admitting 
 that there is not, that there never can be a 
 guide beyond the plains of the morality of 
 good sense, this is no reason why we should 
 be anxious touching the moral future of 
 humanity. Man is so essentially, so neces- 
 sarily a moral being that, when he denies 
 the existence of all morality, that very de- 
 nial already becomes the foundation of a 
 new morality. Mankind, at a pinch, can do 
 without a guide. It proceeds a little more 
 slowly, but almost as surely through the 
 darkness which no one lights. It carries 
 within itself the light whose flame is blown 
 to and fro, but incessantly revived by the 
 storms. It is, so to speak, independent of 
 the ideas which imagine that they lead it. 
 Moreover, it is interesting and easy to 
 establish that these periodical ideas have 
 
 126
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 always had but little influence on the mass 
 of good and evil that is done in the world. 
 The only thing that has a real influence is 
 the spiritual wave which carries us, which 
 has its ebbs and flows, but which seems 
 slowly to overtake and conquer we know 
 not what in space. More important than 
 the idea is the time that lapses around it, 
 is the development of a civilisation which 
 is only the level of the general intelli- 
 gence at a given moment in history. If a 
 religion were revealed to us to-morrow, 
 proving, scientifically and with absolute 
 certainty, that every act of goodness, of 
 self-sacrifice, of heroism, of inward nobility 
 would bring us, immediately after our 
 death, an indubitable and unimaginable re- 
 ward, I doubt whether the proportion of 
 good and evil, of virtues and vices amid 
 which we live would undergo an appreciable 
 change. Would you have a convincing ex- 
 ample? In the middle ages there were 
 
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 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 moments when faith was absolute and ob- 
 truded itself with a certainty that corre- 
 sponds exactly with our scientific certainties. 
 The rewards promised for well-doing, the 
 punishments threatening evil were, in the 
 thoughts of the men of that time, as tan- 
 gible, so to speak, as would be those of the 
 revelation of which I spoke above. Never- 
 theless, we do not see that the average of 
 goodness was raised. A few saints sacrificed 
 themselves for their brothers, carried cer- 
 tain virtues, selected from among the more 
 contestable, to the pitch of heroism; but the 
 bulk of men continued to deceive one an- 
 other, to lie, to fornicate, to steal, to be 
 guilty of envy, to commit murder. The 
 mean of the vices was no lower than that of 
 to-day. On the contrary, life was incom- 
 parably harsher, more cruel and more un- 
 just, because the low-water mark of the 
 general intelligence was less high. 
 
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 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 XI 
 
 Let us return to our positivist, utilitarian, 
 materialist or rational morality, which we 
 have called the morality of common sense 
 and good sense. It is certain that, beside 
 the latter, there has always been, there still 
 is another which embraces all that extends 
 from the virtues of good sense, which are 
 necessary to our material and spiritual hap- 
 piness, to the infinity of heroism, of self- 
 sacrifice, of goodness, of love, of inward 
 probity and dignity. It is certain that the 
 morality of good sense, although it may go 
 pretty far in some directions, such as that 
 of altruism, for instance, will always be a 
 little wanting in nobility, in disinterested- 
 ness and, above all, in I know not what 
 faculties that are capable of bringing it into 
 direct relations with the uncontested mys- 
 tery of life. 
 
 If it be probable, as we have hinted, that 
 
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 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 our good sense answers only to an infini- 
 tesimal portion of the phenomena, the truths 
 and the laws of nature, if it isolate us some- 
 what piteously in this world, we have within 
 us other faculties which are marvellously 
 adapted to the unknown parts of the uni- 
 verse and which seem to have been given to 
 us expressly to prepare us, if not to under- 
 stand them, at least to admit them and to 
 undergo their great presentiments. These 
 are imagination and the mystic summit of 
 our reason. Do and say what we may, we 
 have never been, we are not yet a sort of 
 purely logical animal. There is in us, above 
 the reasoning portion of our reason, a whole 
 region which answers to something differ- 
 ent, which is preparing for the surprises of 
 the future, which is awaiting the events of 
 the unknown. This part of our intelligence, 
 which I will call imagination or "mystic 
 reason," went before us in times when, so 
 to speak, we knew nothing of the laws of 
 
 130
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 nature, outran our imperfect attainments 
 and made us live, morally, socially and 
 sentimentally, on a level very much superior 
 to that of those attainments. At the pres- 
 ent time, when we have made the latter 
 take a few steps forward in the darkness 
 and when, in the hundred years that have 
 just elapsed, we have unravelled more chaos 
 than in a thousand previous centuries, at the 
 present time, when our material life seems 
 on the point of becoming fixed and assured, 
 is this a reason why these two faculties 
 should cease to go ahead of us or why they 
 should retrocede towards good sense? Are 
 there not, on the contrary, very serious 
 reasons for urging them forwards, so as 
 to restore the normal distances and their 
 traditional lead? Is it right that we should 
 lose confidence in them? Is it possible to 
 say that they have hindered any form of 
 human progress? Perhaps they have de- 
 ceived us more than once; but their fruitful 
 
 131
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 errors, by forcing us to march onwards, 
 have revealed to us, in the straying, more 
 truths than our over-timid good sense would 
 ever have lighted upon by marking time. 
 The most welcome discoveries, in biology, 
 in chemistry, in medicine, in physics, almost 
 all had their starting-point in an hypothesis 
 supplied by imagination or mystic reason, 
 an hypothesis which the experiments of 
 good sense have confirmed, but which, given 
 as it is to narrow methods, it would never 
 have foreseen. 
 
 XII 
 
 In the exact sciences, in which it seems as 
 if they ought to be first dethroned, imagina- 
 tion and mystic reason (that is to say that 
 part of our reason which extends above 
 good sense, draws no conclusions and plays 
 an enormous and lawful part in the hesita- 
 tions and possibilities of the unknown) , our 
 imagination, I was saying, and our mystic 
 
 132
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 reason again occupy a place of honour. In 
 aesthetics, they reign almost undivided. 
 Why should silence be laid upon them in 
 our morality, which fills an intermediary 
 space between the exact sciences and aesthet- 
 ics? There is no concealing the fact: if 
 they cease to come to the assistance of good 
 sense, if they give up prolonging its work, 
 the whole summit of our morality falls in 
 abruptly. Starting from a certain line which 
 is exceeded by the heroes, the great wise 
 men and even by the majority of mere good 
 men, all the height of our morality is the 
 fruit of our imagination and belongs to 
 mystic reason. The ideal man, as formed 
 by the most enlightened and the most ex- 
 tensive good sense, does not yet correspond, 
 does not even correspond in the slightest 
 degree with the ideal man of our imagina- 
 tion. The latter is infinitely higher, more 
 generous, nobler, more disinterested, more 
 capable of love, of self-abnegation, of devo- 
 
 133
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 tion and of essential sacrifices. It is a ques- 
 tion of knowing which of the two is right or 
 wrong, which has the right of surviving. 
 Or, rather, it is a question of knowing 
 whether some new fact permit us to make 
 this demand and to bring into question the 
 high traditions of human morality. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Where shall we find this new fact? 
 Among all the revelations which science 
 has lately given us, is there a single one 
 that authorises us to take anything from the 
 ideal set before us by Marcus Aurelius, for 
 instance? Does the least sign, the least 
 indication, the least presentiment arouse a 
 suspicion that the primitive ideas which 
 hitherto have guided the just man will have 
 to change their direction and that the road 
 of human good-will is a false road? What 
 discovery tells us that it is time to destroy 
 
 134
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 in our conscience all that goes beyond strict 
 justice, that is to say those unnamed virtues 
 which, beyond those necessary to social life, 
 appear to be weaknesses and yet turn the 
 simple decent man into the real and pro- 
 found good man? 
 
 Those virtues, we shall be told, and a host 
 of others that have always formed the per- 
 fume of great souls, those virtues would 
 doubtless be in their places in a world 
 wherein the struggle for life was no longer 
 so necessary as it is now on a planet on 
 which the evolution of species is not yet 
 finished. Meanwhile, most of them disarm 
 those who practise them as against those 
 who do not practise them. They trammel 
 the development of those who ought to be 
 the best to the advantage of the less good. 
 They oppose an excellent, but human and 
 particular ideal to the general ideal of life; 
 and this more restricted ideal is necessarily 
 vanquished beforehand. 
 
 135
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 The objection is a specious one. First of 
 all, this so-called discovery of the struggle 
 for life, in which men seek the source of a 
 new morality, is at bottom but a discovery 
 of words. It is not enough to give an un- 
 accustomed name to an immemorial law in 
 order to render lawful a radical deviation 
 from the human ideal. The struggle for 
 life has existed since the existence of our 
 planet; and not one of its consequences was 
 modified, not one of its riddles solved on 
 the day when men thought that they had 
 taken cognizance of it by adorning it with 
 an appellation which a whim of the vocab- 
 ulary will change, perhaps, before fifty 
 years have passed. Next, it behoves us to 
 admit that, if these virtues sometimes dis- 
 arm us in the face of those who do not know 
 them, they disarm us only in very con- 
 temptible combats. Certainly, the over- 
 scrupulous man will be deceived by him who 
 is unscrupulous, the too-loving, over-indul- 
 
 136
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 gent, too-devoted man will suiter at the 
 hands of him who is less so; but can this 
 be called a victory of the second over the 
 first? In what does this defeat strike at 
 the inner life of the better man? He will 
 lose some material advantage by it; but he 
 would lose much more by leaving unculti- 
 vated all the region that extends beyond the 
 morality of good sense. The man who en- 
 riches his sensibility enriches his intelli- 
 gence; and these are the properly human 
 forces that always end by having the last 
 word. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Moreover, if a few general thoughts suc- 
 ceed in emerging from the chaos of half- 
 discoveries, of half-truths that beguile the 
 mind of modern man, does not one of these 
 thoughts assert that nature has given to 
 every species of living being all the instincts 
 necessary for the accomplishment of its 
 
 137
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 destinies? And has she not, at all times, 
 given us a moral ideal which, in the most 
 primitive savage and the most refined 
 civilised man alike, preserves a propor- 
 tional and perceptibly equal distance ahead 
 of the conclusions of good sense ? Is not the 
 savage, just as, in a higher sphere, the 
 civilised man, as a rule infinitely more 
 generous, more loyal, more true to his 
 word than the interest and experience of 
 his wretched life advise? Is it not thanks 
 to this instinctive ideal that we live in an 
 environment in which, despite the practical 
 preponderance of evil, excused by the harsh 
 necessities of existence, the idea of goodness 
 and justice reigns more and more supreme 
 and in which the public conscience, which is 
 the perceptible and general form of that 
 ideal, becomes more and more powerful 
 and certain of itself? 
 
 138
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 XV 
 
 It is fitting that we should come to an 
 understanding, once for all, on the rights of 
 our instincts. We no longer allow the 
 rights of any of our lower instincts to be 
 contested. We know how to justify and to 
 ennoble them by attaching them to some 
 great law of nature. Why should not 
 certain more elevated instincts, quite as 
 incontestable as those which crawl at the 
 bottom of our senses, enjoy the same pre- 
 rogatives ? Must they be denied, suspected 
 or treated as illusions because they are not 
 related to the two or three primitive neces- 
 sities of animal life? Once that they exist, 
 is it not probable that they are as indispen- 
 sable as the others to the accomplishment of 
 a destiny concerning which we do not 
 know what is useful or useless to it, seeing 
 that we do not know its objects? And is it 
 not, then, the duty of our good sense, their 
 
 139
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 innate enemy, to help them, to encourage 
 them and, finally, to confess to itself that 
 certain parts of our life are beyond its 
 sphere? 
 
 XVI 
 
 It is our duty, above all, to strive to 
 develop within ourselves the specific char- 
 acteristics of the class of living being to 
 which we belong and, by preference, those 
 which distinguish us the most from all the 
 other phenomena of the life around us. 
 Among these characteristics, one of the 
 most notorious is, perhaps, not so much our 
 intelligence as our moral aspirations. One 
 portion of these aspirations emanates from 
 our intelligence; but another has always 
 gone before it, has always appeared inde- 
 pendent of it and, finding no visible roots 
 in it, has sought elsewhere, no matter 
 where, but especially in the religions the 
 explanation of a mysterious instinct that 
 
 140
 
 Our Anxious Morality- 
 urged it to go farther. To-day, when the 
 religions are no longer qualified to explain 
 anything, the fact none the less remains; 
 and I do not think that we have the right 
 to suppress with a stroke of the pen a 
 whole region of our inner existence with 
 the sole object of gratifying the reasoning 
 organs of our judgment. Besides, all things 
 hang together and help one another, even 
 those which seem to contend with one 
 another, in the mystery of man's instincts, 
 faculties and aspirations. Our intelligence 
 derives an immediate profit from the sacri- 
 fices which it makes to our imagination 
 when the latter caresses an ideal which the 
 former does not think consonant with the 
 realities of life. Our intelligence has for 
 some years been too prone to believe that 
 it is able to suffice for itself. It needs all 
 our forces, all our feelings, all our passions, 
 all our unconsciousness, all that is with it 
 and all that is against it, in order to spread 
 
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 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 and flourish in life. But the nutriment 
 which is necessary to it above any other is 
 the great anxieties, the grave sufferings, the 
 noble joys of our heart. These truly are 
 to it what the water from heaven is to the 
 lilies, the dew of the morning to the roses. 
 It is well that it should know how to stoop 
 and pass in silence before certain desires and 
 certain dreams of that heart which it does 
 not always understand, but which contains 
 a light that has more than once led it 
 towards truths which it sought in vain at 
 the extreme points of its thoughts. 
 
 XVII 
 
 We are an indivisible spiritual whole; 
 and it is only for the needs of the spoken 
 or written word that we are able, when we 
 study them, to separate the thoughts of our 
 intelligence from the passions and senti- 
 ments of our heart. Every man is more or 
 
 142
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 less the victim of this illusory division. He 
 says to himself, in his youth, that he will 
 see into it more clearly when he is older. 
 He imagines that his passions, even the 
 most generous of them, obscure and dis- 
 turb his thought; and he asks himself, 
 with I know not what hope, how far that 
 thought will go when it reigns alone over 
 his lulled dreams and senses. And old 
 age comes : the intelligence is clear, but 
 has no object remaining. It has nothing 
 left to do, it works in the void. And it 
 is thus that, in the domains where the 
 results of that division are the most visible, 
 we observe that, in general, the work of 
 old age is not equal to that of youth or of 
 mature age, which, nevertheless, has much 
 less experience and knows many fewer 
 things, but which has not yet stifled the 
 mysterious forces foreign to our intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 143
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 XVIII 
 
 If we be now asked which, when all is 
 said, are the precepts of that lofty morality 
 whereof we have spoken without defining it, 
 we will reply that it presupposes a state of 
 soul or of heart rather than a code of 
 strictly-formulated precepts. What consti- 
 tutes its essence is the sincere and strong 
 wish to form within ourselves a powerful 
 idea of justice and of love that always rises 
 above that formed by the clearest and most 
 generous portions of our intelligence. One 
 could mention a thousand examples : I will 
 take one only, that which is at the centre of 
 all our anxieties and beside which all the 
 rest has no importance, that which, when we 
 thus speak of lofty and noble morality and 
 perfect virtues, cross-examines us as culprits 
 and asks us bluntly, "And when do you 
 intend to put a stop to the injustice in 
 which you live?" 
 
 144
 
 Our Anxious Morality- 
 Yes, all of us who possess more than 
 the others, we who are more or less rich as 
 against those who are quite poor, we all live 
 in the midst of an injustice deeper than that 
 which arises from the abuse of brute 
 strength, because we abuse a strength which 
 is not even real. Our reason deplores this 
 injustice, but explains it, excuses it and de- 
 clares it to be inevitable. It shows us that 
 it is impossible to apply to it the swift 
 and efficacious remedy which our equity 
 seeks; that any too radical remedy would 
 carry with it evils more cruel and more 
 desperate than those which it pretended to 
 cure; it proves to us, in short, that this 
 injustice is organic, essential and in con- 
 formity with all the laws of nature. Our 
 reason is perhaps right; but what is much 
 more deeply, much more surely right is our 
 ideal of justice, which proclaims that our 
 reason is wrong. Even when it is not 
 acting, it is well, if not for the present, 
 
 145
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 at least for the future, that this ideal should 
 have a quick sense of iniquity; and, if it 
 no longer involves renunciations or heroic 
 sacrifices, this is not because it is less noble 
 or less sure than the ideal of the best re- 
 ligions, but because it promises no other 
 rewards than those of duty accomplished 
 and because these rewards are just those 
 which hitherto only a few heroes have 
 understood and which the great presenti- 
 ments that hover beyond our intelligence 
 are seeking to make us understand. 
 
 XIX 
 
 In reality, we need so few precepts I . . . 
 Perhaps three or four, at the utmost five 
 or six, which a child could give us. We 
 must, before all, understand them; and "to 
 understand," as we take it, is hardly, as 
 a rule, the beginning of the life of an ideal. 
 If that were enough, all our intelligences 
 and all our characters would be equal; for 
 
 146
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 every man of even a very mean intelligence 
 is apt to understand, at this first stage, all 
 that is explained to him with sufficient clear- 
 ness. There are as many manners and as 
 many stages in the manners of understand- 
 ing a truth as there are minds that think 
 that they understand it. If I prove, for 
 instance, to an intelligent vain man how 
 childish is his vanity, to an egoist capable 
 of comprehension how unreasonable and 
 hateful is his egoism, they will readily 
 agree, they will even amplify what I have 
 said. There is, therefore, no doubt that 
 they have understood; but it is very nearly 
 certain that they will continue to act as 
 though not so much as the extremity of 
 one of the truths which they have just 
 admitted had grazed their brain. Whereas, 
 in another man, these truths, covered with 
 the same words, will one evening suddenly 
 enter and penetrate, through his thoughts, 
 to the very bottom of his heart, upsetting 
 
 147
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 his existence, displacing every axis, every 
 lever, every joy, every sorrow, every object 
 of his activity. He has understood the 
 sense of the word "to understand," for 
 we cannot flatter ourselves that we have 
 understood a truth until it is impossible 
 for us not to shape our lives in accordance 
 with it. 
 
 XX 
 
 To return to and resume the central idea 
 of all this, let us recognise that it is neces- 
 sary to maintain the equilibrium between 
 what we have called good sense and the 
 other faculties and sentiments of our life. 
 Contrary to our former wont, we are nowa- 
 days too much inclined to shatter this 
 equilibrium in favour of good sense. 
 Certainly, good sense has the right to con- 
 trol more strictly than ever all that other 
 forces bring to it, all that goes beyond the 
 practical conclusions of its reasoning; but 
 
 148
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 it cannot prevent them from acting until 
 it has acquired the certainty that they are 
 deceiving it; and it owes to itself, to the 
 respect of its own laws the duty of being 
 more and more circumspect in asserting 
 that certainty. Now, though it may have 
 acquired the conviction that those forces 
 have committed a mistake in ascribing to a 
 divine and precise will and injunctions the 
 majority of the phenomena manifested 
 within themselves; though it be its duty to 
 redress the accessory errors that proceed 
 from this central error, by eliminating, for 
 instance, from our moral ideal a host of 
 sterile and dangerous virtues, it could never 
 deny that these same phenomena subsist, 
 whether they emanate from a superior in- 
 stinct, from the life of the species, infinitely 
 more powerful within us than the life of the 
 individual, or from any other unintelligible 
 source. In any case, it could not treat them 
 as illusions; for, at that rate, we might ask 
 
 149
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ourselves whether this supreme judge, out- 
 flanked and contradicted on every side by 
 the genius of nature and the inconceivable 
 laws of the universe, be not itself more 
 illusive than the illusions which it aspires 
 to destroy. 
 
 XXI 
 
 For all that touches upon our moral life, 
 we still have the choice of our illusions : 
 good sense itself, that is to say the scientific 
 spirit, is obliged to admit as much. Where- 
 fore, taking one illusion with another, let us 
 welcome those from above rather than those 
 from below. The former, after all, have 
 brought us to the stage at which we are; 
 and, when we look back upon our starting- 
 point, the dreadful cave of prehistoric man, 
 we owe them a certain gratitude. The 
 latter illusions, those of the inferior regions, 
 that is to say of good sense, have given 
 proofs of their capacity hitherto only when 
 
 150
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 accompanied and supported by the former. 
 They have not yet walked alone. They are 
 taking their first steps in the dark. They 
 are leading us, they say, to a regular, 
 assured, measured, exactly-weighed state of 
 well-being, to the conquest of matter. Be 
 it so : they have charge of this kind of hap- 
 piness. But let them not pretend that, to 
 attain it, it is necessary to fling overboard, 
 like a dangerous cargo, all that hitherto 
 formed the heroic, cloud-topped, indefatig- 
 able, adventurous energy of our conscience. 
 Leave us a few fancy virtues. Allow a little 
 space for our fraternal sentiments. It is 
 very possible that these virtues and senti- 
 ments, which are not strictly indispensable 
 to the just man of to-day, are the roots of 
 all that will blossom when man shall have 
 accomplished the hardest stage of the 
 "struggle for life." Also, we must keep a 
 few sumptuary virtues in reserve, in order 
 to replace those which we abandon as 
 
 151
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 useless; for our conscience has need of 
 exercise and nourishment. Already we 
 have thrown off a number of constraints 
 which were assuredly hurtful, but which at 
 least kept up the activity of our inner life. 
 We are no longer chaste, since we have 
 recognised that the work of the flesh, cursed 
 for twenty centuries, is natural and lawful. 
 We no longer go out in search of resigna- 
 tion, of mortification, of sacrifice; we are no 
 longer lowly in heart or poor in spirit. All 
 this is very lawful, seeing that these virtues 
 depended on a religion which is retiring; 
 but it is not well that their places should 
 remain empty. Our ideal no longer asks to 
 create saints, virgins, martyrs; but, even 
 though it take another road, the spiritual 
 road that animated the saints must remain 
 intact and is still necessary to the man who 
 wishes to go further than simple justice. It 
 is beyond that simple justice that the 
 morality begins of those who hope in the 
 
 152
 
 Our Anxious Morality 
 
 future. It is in this perhaps fairy-like, but 
 not chimerical part of our conscience that 
 we must acclimatise ourselves and learn to 
 delight. It is still reasonable to persuade 
 ourselves that in so doing we have not been 
 duped. 
 
 XXII 
 The good-will of men is admirable. They 
 are ready to renounce all the rights which 
 they thought specific, to abandon all their 
 dreams and all their hopes of happiness, 
 even as many of them have already aban- 
 doned, without despairing, all their hopes 
 beyond the tomb. They are resigned in ad- 
 vance to seeing their generations succeed 
 one another without an object, a mission, 
 an horizon, a future, if such be the certain 
 will of life. The energy and pride of our 
 conscience will manifest themselves for the 
 last time in this acceptation and in this ad- 
 hesion. But, before reaching this stage, 
 before abdicating so gloomily, it is right 
 
 153
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 that we should ask for proofs ; and, hitherto, 
 these seem to turn against those who bring 
 them. In any case, nothing is decided. We 
 are still in suspense. Those who assure us 
 that the old moral ideal must disappear, 
 because the religions are disappearing, are 
 strangely mistaken. It was not the relig- 
 ions that formed the ideal, but the ideal that 
 gave birth to the religions. Now that these 
 last have weakened or disappeared, their 
 sources survive and seek another channel. 
 When all is said, with the exception of cer- 
 tain factitious and parasitic virtues which 
 we naturally abandon at the turn of the 
 majority of religions, there is nothing as yet 
 to be changed in our old Aryan ideal of 
 justice, conscientiousness, courage, kindness 
 and honour. We have only to draw nearer 
 to it, to clasp it more closely, to realise it 
 more effectively; and, before going beyond 
 it, we have still a long and noble road to 
 travel beneath the stars. 
 
 154
 
 ROME
 
 ROME 
 
 I 
 
 FOR twenty centuries, Rome has been 
 the storehouse of all that was beautiful; 
 and surely in no other spot in the world 
 does so much beauty survive. 
 
 She has created nothing, save perhaps a 
 certain spirit of grandeur, a coordination of 
 beautiful things; but the most magnificent 
 moments of the earth clung to her so fondly 
 and displayed such energy during their 
 sojourn that on no other point of the globe 
 have they left so many imperishable traces. 
 Treading her soil, we tread the mutilated 
 footprint of the goddess who reveals herself 
 no longer to men. 
 
 Nature gave her the wonderful site, estab- 
 lished her fitly for the races that passed 
 
 157
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 beside on the peaks of history to let fall 
 their jewels into the noblest cup ever opened 
 beneath the sky. She was not unworthy to 
 receive those marvels; she was already their 
 equal. Beneath her limpid azure, the 
 gloomy, obscure plants of the north still 
 mate with southern foliage, inhaling 
 their brightness and gladness. To the pur- 
 est of her trees — the cypress, which lifts its 
 head like an ardent and sombre prayer; the 
 stone-pine, into which the forest has whis- 
 pered its gravest and sweetest thought ; the 
 massive evergreen oak, which so willingly 
 adopts an archway's graceful form — to 
 these the tradition of ages has given a 
 pride, a conscious solemnity which they pos- 
 sess no elsewhere in the world. None can 
 forget them, who once has seen them and 
 understood, or fail to recognise them from 
 among kindred trees of a less sacred soil. 
 They were the ornaments, they were the 
 witnesses of incomparable things. They are 
 
 158
 
 Rome 
 
 one with the scattered aqueducts, the dis- 
 crowned mausoleums, the broken arches; 
 one with the columns, heroic in their ruin, 
 that array the deserted Campagna. They 
 have assumed the style of the eternal 
 marbles, which they surround with respect 
 and silence. Like these marbles, they also 
 have two or three clear, but mysterious lines 
 to tell of the sorrow confessed by a plain 
 that bears, without flinching, the wreck of 
 its glory. They are — and know they are — 
 Roman. 
 
 A circle of mountains, their sonorous 
 names augustly familiar, their heads often 
 charged with snow as dazzling as the 
 memories which they evoke, create around 
 the city that never can perish a precise and 
 glorious horizon, which divides her from 
 the world, but does not isolate her from the 
 sky. And, in these desolate precincts; in 
 the midst of the lifeless places where the 
 flagstones, the steps, the porticoes multiply 
 
 159
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 silence and absence; at all the cross-roads 
 where some wounded statue keeps guard in 
 emptiness; among the basins, the capitals, 
 the nymphs and the tritons, water flows 
 docile and luminous, obedient still to the 
 orders received two thousand years ago, 
 decking the immaculate solitude with its 
 mobile fragrance, its garlands of dew and 
 trophies of crystal, its azure plumes and 
 crowns of pearl. It is as though time, 
 among all the monuments that had hoped 
 to brave it, respected only the fragile hours 
 of that which evaporates and flows away. 
 
 II 
 
 Beauty, though always a borrowed beauty, 
 has dwelt so long within these walls which 
 go from the Janiculum to the Esquiline; it 
 has taken root there so persistently that the 
 very spot, the air we breathe, the sky that 
 covers it, the curves that define it have ac- 
 
 160
 
 Rome 
 
 quired a prodigious power of appropriation 
 and ennoblement. Rome, like a pyre, puri- 
 fies all that the errors and caprices of men, 
 their ignorance and extravagance have 
 forced upon her incessantly since her ruin. 
 So far, it has been impossible to disfigure 
 her. One might almost believe that, for 
 any work to be carried out here or to live, 
 it must first cast off its original ugliness, it 
 must cease to be vulgar. Whatever does 
 not conform to the style of the seven hills is 
 slowly effaced and rejected; it crumbles 
 beneath the influence of the watchful genius 
 that has fixed the aesthetic principles of the 
 city on the horizons, the rocks and the 
 marble of the heights. Thus, for instance, 
 the art of the middle ages and the Primi- 
 tives must have been more active here than 
 in any other city, since this was the heart of 
 the Christian universe; and yet they have 
 left but few distinctive traces, these even 
 appearing, as it were, hidden and ashamed: 
 
 161
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 enough, but no more, for the history of the 
 world, of which this was the centre, not to 
 be left incomplete. But when we turn to 
 those artists whose spirit was naturally in 
 harmony with that which presides over the 
 destinies of the eternal city — Giulio 
 Romano, the Carracci and, above all, 
 Raphael and Michael Angelo — we find in 
 their work here a plenitude of power, a 
 conviction, a kind of instinctive satisfaction 
 which they manifest in no other place. 
 One feels that they had not to create, but 
 only to choose from among the unrevealed 
 forms that thronged to them imperiously 
 from every side, clamouring to be 
 born : to these the masters gave substance. 
 A mistake was impossible: they did not 
 paint, in the proper sense of the word, but 
 merely uncovered the veiled images which 
 had haunted the halls and arcades of the 
 palaces. And so intimate, so indispensable 
 is the relation between their art and the 
 
 163
 
 Rome 
 
 environment that gives it life that, when 
 their works are exiled to the museums or 
 churches of other cities, they seem out of 
 proportion, unduly vigorous and unduly 
 decorative, with an arbitrary conception of 
 life. It is for this reason that copies 
 or photographs of the ceiling of the Sistine 
 Chapel appear disconcerting and almost in- 
 comprehensible. 
 
 But to the traveller who does not enter 
 the Vatican till he, too, has drunk in the 
 mighty will-power that emanates from the 
 thousand fragments of the temples and 
 public places: to him Michael Angelo's 
 overpowering effort becomes magnificent 
 and natural. The prodigious vault, on 
 which a people of giants hurtle together in 
 a grave and harmonious orgy of enthusiasm 
 and muscles, turns into an arch of the very 
 sky and reflects all the scenes of energy, all 
 the burning virtues the memories of which 
 
 are still restless beneath the ruins of this 
 
 163
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 passionate soul. So, too, as he stands be- 
 fore the Conflagration of the Borgo, he will 
 not feel as he would were he to behold the 
 admirable fresco on the walls of the Na- 
 tional Gallery or the Louvre; he will not 
 say to himself, as Taine does, for instance, 
 that these superb nude bodies are but 
 vaguely concerned with the thing that is 
 happening, that the flames which arise from 
 the building in no wise disturb them and 
 that their one preoccupation is to pose as 
 good models and bring into value the curve 
 of a hip or the anatomy of a thigh. No, 
 the visitor who has submissively heeded the 
 injunctions of all that surrounds him will 
 require no telling that here, in these halls of 
 the Vatican, as beneath the vault of the 
 Sistine, he is contemplating the tardy, but 
 normal and logical development of an art 
 which might have been that of Rome. He 
 will realise that, different as the impression 
 may be which these two great efforts 
 
 164
 
 Rome 
 
 produce, he discovers the formula here 
 which the too positive genius of the Quirites 
 had lacked the good fortune or the oppor- 
 tunity to disengage. For Rome, notwith- 
 standing all her endeavours, could not, of 
 her own initiative, give to the universe the 
 essential image which she had promised. It 
 was to the spoils of Greece that she owed 
 her beauty; and her chief merit was that 
 she understood the beauty of Greek art and 
 eagerly amassed its treasures. Her en- 
 deavours to add to it resulted only in de- 
 formity; she was unable to adapt its expres- 
 sion to her personal life. Her paintings and 
 sculptures responded only by a kind of 
 heresy, a vague approximateness to the 
 realities of her existence; and such 
 feeble originality as her architecture 
 possessed was due solely to its colossal pro- 
 portions. One might almost imagine that 
 old Buonarotti and the superb colourist of 
 Urbino had but unearthed, after all the 
 
 165
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 catastrophes, all the long silences and the 
 seeming deaths of Rome, the latent, unin- 
 terrupted tradition which had unceasingly 
 been in travail underground and which now 
 emerged at last to culminate in their work 
 and to declare to the world what the Em- 
 pire had been powerless to say. For these 
 men are more distinctively Roman, more 
 truly representative, perhaps, of the uncon- 
 scious and secret desire of that Latin earth 
 than was the Rome of the Caesars. That 
 Rome had failed in its image. She had re- 
 mained artificially Hellenic; and Greece 
 could not provide this infinitely vaster race, 
 differing so widely from her, with the forms 
 demanded by its ornamental consciousness. 
 Greece could be only a sure and magnificent 
 starting-point; but her delicate, precise 
 statues and paintings, so nicely, almost 
 minutely proportioned, were out of place in 
 that Forum, surcharged with immense 
 monuments, as among the monstrous 
 
 166
 
 Rome 
 
 Thermae and violent circuses, or under the 
 sumptuous arches of the superposed basili- 
 cas. What if those frescoes of Michael 
 Angelo were the answer to the call of the 
 empty arches that had waited a thousand 
 years; what if they were the almost organic 
 consequence of those imperial columns and 
 marbles? And may we not ask ourselves 
 too whether the ceiling, the penden- 
 tives and lunettes of the Farnesina and 
 the Conflagration of the Rorgo do not 
 illustrate, better by far than the sculptures 
 of Phidias or Praxiteles, better also than 
 the best paintings of Pompeii or Her- 
 culaneum, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, 
 Virgil's JEne'id, or the poems of Horace? 
 
 Ill 
 
 But all this, perhaps, is merely illusion 
 and due to the spell of the appropriative 
 power which we have mentioned above. 
 
 167
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 That power is such that whatever might, at 
 the first glance, seem wholly opposed to the 
 idea that reigns within these walls not only 
 does not contradict this idea, but serves to 
 define and declare it. Even Bernini — rhe- 
 torical, exuberant, ubiquitous Bernini — 
 as irreconcilable as it is possible to be with 
 the primitive gravity and taciturnity of 
 Rome, even he, so detestable elsewhere, 
 seems here to be adopted, justified by the 
 genius of the city and serves to explain and 
 illustrate certain somewhat redundant 
 and declamatory sides of Roman greatness. 
 Moreover, a city that possesses the Venus 
 of the Capitol and of the Vatican, the 
 Sleeping Ariadne, the Meleager and the 
 Torso of Hercules, the countless marvels 
 of museums as numerous almost as her pal- 
 aces — think only of the treasures in a 
 single one of these museums, the newest of 
 all, the Nazionale — a city whose every 
 
 street, almost every house conceals some 
 
 168
 
 Rome 
 
 fragment of marble or bronze which, did 
 some new town contain it, would send pil- 
 grims flocking; a city that can offer the 
 Pantheon of Agrippa, certain columns in 
 the Forum, in a word, so many treasures 
 that baffled memory cannot keep pace with 
 untiring admiration; a city that has among 
 its wonders those cypress-girdled lawns of 
 the Villa Borghese, those fountains, those 
 eternal gardens; a city, indeed, that is the 
 refuge of all that was best in the past of 
 the only people who cultivated beauty as 
 others cultivated corn, the olive or the vine : 
 such a city opposes a resistance to vulgarity 
 which, inactive though it be, is yet invinci- 
 ble ; and she can tolerate all things without 
 defilement. The immortal presence of an 
 assembly of gods, so perfect that no mutila-1 
 tion can alter the rhythm of body or pose, 
 protects her against the errors herself may 
 commit and prevents the new generations 
 
 of men from having more empire upon her 
 
 169
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 than time and the barbarians had on those 
 very gods. 
 
 And these lead us back to the little cities 
 of Hellas that discovered one day and fixed 
 for ever the laws of human beauty. The 
 beauty of the earth, except for some spots 
 which our sordid industries have ravaged, 
 has altered but little since the days of Au- 
 gustus and Pericles. The sea is infinite still, 
 is still inviolate. The forest, the plain, the 
 harvest, the villages, rivers and streams, 
 the mountains, the dawn and the evening, 
 the stars and the sky, vary as these all may 
 according to climate and latitude, offer us 
 still the same spectacles of grandeur and 
 tenderness, the same soft, profound har- 
 monies, the same fairy-like scenes of chang- 
 ing complexity which they showed to the 
 Athenian citizens and the people of Rome. 
 Nature remains more or less as she 
 was; and, besides, we have grown more 
 sensitive and can to-day admire more freely. 
 
 170
 
 Rome 
 
 But, when we turn to the beauty special to 
 man, the beauty that is his own immediate 
 aim, we find that, owing perhaps to our too 
 great wealth or excessive application, to the 
 scattering of our efforts, our lack of concen- 
 tration, or the want of a certain goal and 
 an incontestable starting-point, we appear to 
 have lost almost all that the ancients had 
 been able to establish and make their own. 
 In all that regards purely human aesthetics, 
 in what concerns our body, our gestures, our 
 clothes, the objects we live with, our houses 
 and gardens, our monuments, even our land- 
 scapes, we are groping so timidly, we dis- 
 play such confusion and inexperience that 
 one might truly believe our occupation of 
 this planet to date but from yesterday and 
 ourselves to be still at the very beginning of 
 the period of adaptation. For the work of 
 our hands there no longer exists a common 
 measure, an accepted rule or conviction. 
 Our painters, our architects, our sculp- 
 
 171
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 tors, our men of letters — and we in our 
 homes, our cities — seek in a thousand differ- 
 ent, contradictory directions for the sure, 
 the undeniable beauty which the ancients 
 possessed so fully. Should one of us, by 
 any chance, create, join together or discover 
 a few lines, a harmony of form or colour 
 that should incontestably prove that the 
 mysterious, decisive point had been attained, 
 it would be regarded as the merest hazard, 
 as an isolated and precious phenomenon 
 and neither the author nor any one else 
 would be able to repeat it. 
 
 And yet, for a few happy years, man had 
 mastered the laws of the beauty that is 
 essentially and specifically human ; and so 
 great was his certainty that it compels our 
 conviction even to this day. In the beauty 
 of his own body, the Greek instinctively 
 found the fixed standard which the Egyp- 
 tians, the Assyrians, the Persians and all the 
 
 anterior civilisations had sought in vain 
 
 172
 
 Rome 
 
 among animals and flowers, rocks and 
 mountains, monsters and chimeras; and the 
 architecture of his temples and palaces, the 
 style of his houses, the proportion and 
 ornament of the things which he used in his 
 daily life were all derived from the beauty 
 of this nude and perfect body. This people, 
 among which nudity, with its natural conse- 
 quence, the irreproachable harmony of 
 limbs and muscles, was almost a religious 
 and civic obligation, has taught us that the 
 beauty of the human body is as diverse in 
 its perfection, as spiritual, as mysterious 
 as the beauty of the stars or sea. Every 
 other ideal has misled and must always mis- 
 lead the endeavours and efforts of man. In 
 all the arts, intelligent races came nearer to 
 true beauty in proportion as they came 
 nearer to the habit of nudity; departing 
 from this, they departed also from beauty. 
 The beauty proper to Rome — in other 
 words, the little original beauty which she 
 
 *73
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 added to the spoils of Greece — was due to 
 the last remains of this custom. For, in 
 Rome, as Taine tells us, "they also as- 
 sembled together to swim, to be rubbed, to 
 perspire, to wrestle and run ; or at least, to 
 watch the runners and wrestlers. For 
 Rome, in this respect, is only an enlarged 
 Athens; the same ways of life obtain, the 
 same habits, the same instincts and 
 pleasures: the only difference lies in the pro- 
 portion and the moment. The city has 
 swollen till it numbers masters by the hun- 
 dred thousand and slaves by the million; 
 but, from Xenophon to Marcus Aurelius, 
 the gymnastic and rhetorical training has 
 not altered; they have still the tastes of ath- 
 letes and orators and it is in this direction 
 that one must work to please them ; they are 
 worshippers of the nude, they are judges of 
 style, of conversation and ornament. We 
 can no longer understand this pagan life of 
 the body, which was so curious and yet so 
 
 174
 
 Rome 
 
 idle; the climate has remained as it was, but 
 man changed when he put on clothes and 
 turned Christian." 
 
 It might more justly be said, perhaps, that 
 Rome, at the period of which Taine speaks, 
 was an intermittent and incomplete Athens. 
 What was habitual there and, in some meas- 
 ure, organic becomes here only artificial 
 and exceptional. They still cultivate and 
 admire the human body, but it is almost 
 always concealed by the toga ; and the wear- 
 ing of the toga blurs the pure, clear lines 
 which a multitude of nude and living 
 statues imposed upon the columns and 
 pediments of the temples. The monuments 
 grow larger and larger, lose their form 
 and, little by little, their human harmony. 
 The golden standard is shrouded and the 
 veil shall be lifted only by a few artists of 
 the Renascence, which was the moment 
 when positive beauty shed its last beams. 
 
 i75
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 
 ACCIDENT
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ACCIDENT 
 
 THE more we master the forces of 
 nature, the more do our chances of 
 accidents multiply, even as the tamer's 
 dangers increase in proportion to the num- 
 ber of wild animals which he "puts through 
 their tricks" in the cage. Formerly, we 
 avoided the contact of these forces as much 
 as possible; to-day, they have gained admit- 
 tance to our household. And so, notwith- 
 standing our more prudent and peaceable 
 manners, it happens to us more often than 
 to our fathers to look pretty closely upon 
 death. It is probable, therefore, that many 
 of those who read these notes will have felt 
 the same emotions and have had occasion to 
 make similar remarks. 
 
 179
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 II 
 
 One of the first questions that arise is that 
 of presentiment. Is it true, as many assert, 
 that from the very morning we have a sort 
 of intuition of the event that threatens the 
 day? It is difficult to reply, inasmuch as 
 our experience can bear only upon events 
 which "might have turned out worse," or 
 which, at least, have had no serious results. 
 It seems natural, therefore, that those acci- 
 dents which were to be free from conse- 
 quences should not have stirred the deep 
 waters of our instinct beforehand; and I 
 believe it to be true that they do not even 
 ripple their surface. As for the others, 
 which entail a more or less speedy death, 
 their victims seldom possess the strength 
 or lucidity required to satisfy our curiosity. 
 In any case, all that our personal experience 
 is able to gather on this subject is very 
 uncertain; and the question remains. 
 
 1 80
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 III 
 
 One fine day, then, we start at early dawn, 
 by motor-car, bicycle, motor-cycle, in a skiff 
 or steam-boat: it is immaterial to the event 
 that is preparing; but, to make the picture 
 more definite, let us take, by preference, a 
 motor-car or motor-cycle, which are won- 
 derful instruments of affliction and which 
 put the fiercest questions to fortune in the 
 great game of life and death. Suddenly, 
 for no reason, at the turn of the road, in 
 the very middle of the long, wide highway, 
 at the top of a descent, here or there, on 
 the right or on the left, seizing the brake, 
 the wheel, the steering-handle, unexpectedly 
 barring all space, assuming the deceptive 
 and perfectly transparent appearance of a 
 tree, a wall, a rock, an obstacle of one sort 
 or another, stands death, face to face, tower- 
 ing, unforeseen, huge, immediate, indubiti- 
 
 able, inevitable, irrevocable, and, with a 
 
 181
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 click, shuts off the horizon of life, which 
 it leaves without outlet. . . . 
 
 Forthwith, an eager and interminable 
 scene, contained within half a second, sets in 
 between our intelligence and our instinct. 
 The attitude of our intelligence, our reason, 
 our consciousness, by whatever name you 
 please to call it, is extremely interesting. It 
 decides instantaneously, sanely and logically 
 that all is irretrievably lost. Yet it displays 
 neither madness nor terror. It pictures the 
 catastrophe, with all its details and conse- 
 quences, exactly; and it realises with con- 
 tentment that it is not afraid and that it 
 preserves its lucidity. Between the fall and 
 the collision, it has time to rest, it reflects, 
 it diverts itself, it finds leisure wherein to 
 think, of all manner of other things, to call 
 up memories, to make comparisons, trifling 
 and accurate observations: the tree which 
 we see through death is a plane-tree, there 
 
 are three holes in its patterned bark. . . . 
 
 182
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 It is not so fine as the one in the garden. 
 . . . The rock on which our skull will be 
 broken is veined with mica and very white 
 marble. . . . Our intelligence feels that it 
 is not responsible, that we have nothing to 
 reproach it with; it is almost smiling, it 
 enjoys an ambiguous sensation of pleasure 
 and awaits the inevitable with a tempered 
 resignation mingled with prodigious curi- 
 osity. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is evident that, if our lives had only the 
 intervention of this indolent, this too-logical 
 and too-clearsighted dilettante to rely upon, 
 every accident would be fated to end in 
 disaster. Luckily, warned by the nerves, 
 which whirl, lose their heads and bawl like 
 terrified children, another figure bounds 
 upon the stage, a rugged, brutal, naked, 
 muscular figure, elbowing its way and seiz- 
 ing with an irresistible gesture such rem- 
 
 183
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 nants of authority and chances of safety as 
 come within its reach. We call it instinct, 
 the unconscious, the subconscious : it matters 
 not what we call it. Where was it? Where 
 does it come from? 'It was somewhere 
 asleep or else busied with dingy and thank- 
 less tasks deep down in the primitive cav- 
 erns of our body. I Once it was that body's 
 uncontested king, but, for some time since, 
 has been relegated to the lower darkness as 
 an ill-bred, ill-dressed, ill-spoken poor rela- 
 tion, a troublesome and often disagreeable 
 witness of our original misfortune. We no 
 longer think of it, no longer have recourse 
 to it, save in the desperate seconds of our 
 supreme anguish. Fortunately, it has a 
 decent nature, is utterly unselfish and bears 
 no grudge. Instinct knows, besides, that all 
 those ornaments from the height of which 
 we look down upon and despise it are 
 ephemeral and frivolous and that, in reality, 
 itself is the sole master of the human dwell- 
 
 184
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 ing. With a glance that is surer and swifter 
 than the tremendous onrush of the peril, it 
 takes in the situation, then and there un- 
 ravels all its details, issues and possibilities 
 and, in a trice, affords a magnificent, an 
 unforgettable spectacle of strength, courage, 
 precision and will, in which unconquered 
 life flies at the throat of unconquerable 
 death. 
 
 V 
 
 This champion of existence, upstarting 
 like the shaggy savage of the fairy-tales 
 who comes to the rescue of the disconsolate 
 princess, works miracles in the strictest, the 
 most precise sense of the word. Above 
 all, under pressure of necessity, it has one 
 incomparable prerogative : it knows nothing 
 of deliberation, of all the obstacles which it 
 raises, all the impossibilities which it im- 
 poses. Instinct never accepts disaster, not 
 for a moment admits the inevitable and, 
 
 185
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 when on the point of being smashed to 
 atoms, acts cheerfully against all hope, as 
 though doubt, anxiety, fear, discourage- 
 ment were notions absolutely foreign to the 
 primitive forces that quicken it. Through 
 a granite wall it sees nothing but safety, like 
 a cranny of light; and, by dint of seeing it, 
 creates it in the stone. It does not abandon 
 the hope of stopping a mountain that is 
 rushing down upon it. It thrusts aside a 
 rock, darts upon a wire, slips between two 
 columns which were mathematically too 
 close together to admit its passage. Among 
 trees, it chooses infallibly the only one that 
 will yield because an invisible worm has 
 gnawed its root; amid a cluster of vain 
 leaves, it discovers the one strong branch 
 that overhangs the abyss; and, in a heap 
 of sharp flints, it is as though instinct had 
 prepared in anticipation the bed of moss 
 and ferns that is to receive the body. . . . 
 
 The danger once past, reason, stupefied, 
 
 186
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 gasping for breath, unbelieving, a little dis- 
 concerted, turns its head to take a last look 
 at the improbable. Then it resumes the 
 lead, as of right, while the good savage, 
 that no one dreams of thanking, returns in 
 silence to its cave. 
 
 VI 
 
 Perhaps it is not surprising that instinct 
 should save us from the great habitual and 
 immemorial dangers: water, fire, falls, col- 
 lisions, animals. There is here, evidently, a 
 long custom, an ancestral experience to ex- 
 plain its skill. But what amazes me is the 
 ease, the quickness wherewith it acquaints 
 itself with the most complicated, the most 
 unusual inventions of our intelligence. We 
 have only, once and for all, to show it the 
 mechanism, the use and the purpose of the 
 most unexpected machine, however foreign 
 and useless to our real and primitive needs: 
 
 187
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 instinct understands; and, from that mo- 
 ment, in an exigency, it will know the 
 machine's last secrets and its management 
 better than does the intelligence which con- 
 structed it. 
 
 That is why, let the instrument be as new, 
 as recent or as formidable as it will, we can 
 safely say that, in principle, there is no such 
 thing as an inevitable catastrophe. Our un- 
 consciousness is always alive and equal to 
 every imaginable situation. Between the 
 jaws of the vice contained in the power of 
 the mountain or the sea, we can, we must 
 look for a decisive movement on the part of 
 our instinct, which possesses resources as in- 
 exhaustible as those of the universe or of 
 nature, upon whose stores it draws at will. 
 
 VII 
 
 And yet, if the whole truth be told, we no 
 longer all have the same right to rely upon 
 
 188
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 its sovereign intercession. It never dies, 
 never sulks, is never mistaken; but many 
 men banish it to such depths, so rarely per- 
 mit it to catch a glimpse of sunlight, lose 
 sight of it so entirely, humiliate it so cruelly, 
 pinion it so closely that, in the madness of 
 their dire need, they forget where to look 
 for it. They have not the material time 
 in which to warn it or to release it from the 
 dungeon wherein they have chained it; and, 
 when, at last, full of goodwill, armed with 
 its tools, it hurries up to the rescue, the 
 mischief is done, it is too late, death has 
 completed its work. 
 
 These inequalities of instinct, which are 
 connected rather, I suppose, with the 
 promptness of the appeal rather than with 
 the quality of the assistance, appear in every 
 accident. Place two motorists in two 
 parallel, includable and exactly identical 
 cases of danger: an inexplicable touch of 
 
 the wheel, a leap, a twist, a turn, a sheer 
 
 189
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 quiescence, a spell of some kind will save 
 the one, whereas the other will go his nor- 
 mal and wretched way and be smashed to 
 pieces against the obstacle. Of the six per- 
 sons in a car, all strictly involved in the 
 same fate, three will make the only possible, 
 illogical, unforeseen and necessary move- 
 ment, while the three others will act with 
 too much intelligence in the wrong direc- 
 tion. I once witnessed one of those sur- 
 prising manifestations of instinct, or nearly 
 witnessed it; for, although I arrived after 
 the accident, at least I gathered the throb- 
 bing impressions on the spot, among the 
 injured. It was on the descent from Gour- 
 don, the rugged little village, well known 
 to excursionists from Cannes and Nice, 
 perched on a precipitous rock, over two 
 thousand feet in height, to escape the 
 Barbary pirates. It is inacessible on every 
 side; no thoroughfare leads to it, save a 
 terrible zigzag way, which runs down be- 
 
 190
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 tween two ravines. A tilted cart, over- 
 loaded with eight persons, including a 
 woman carrying her child not two months 
 old, was descending this dangerous road, 
 when the horse took fright, ran away and 
 darted towards the abyss. The passengers 
 felt themselves rushing to their deaths; and 
 the woman, anxious to save the child and 
 obeying an admirable impulse of maternal 
 love, flung it, at the supreme moment, from 
 the other side of the cart, where it fell on 
 the roadway, while all the others disap- 
 peared in the precipice bristling with mur- 
 derous rocks. Now, by a miracle which is 
 not unusual where human lives are at stake, 
 the seven victims, caught up in brushwood, 
 in all manner of boughs, escaped with insig- 
 nificant scratches, whereas the poor little 
 child died where it fell, with its skull broken 
 by a stone on the road. Two contrary in- 
 stincts had here struggled for the mastery; 
 and that one with which a glimmer of re- 
 
 191
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 flection had probably been mingled had 
 made the more awkward movement of the 
 two. You will speak of good and bad luck. 
 These mysterious words are permissible, 
 provided it be understood that they are 
 applied to the mysterious movements of our 
 unconsciousness. It is, in fact, preferable, 
 whenever the thing is possible, to throw 
 back the source of a mystery within our- 
 selves: we thus limit to that extent the in- 
 auspicious field of error, discouragement 
 and impotence. 
 
 VIII 
 
 We immediately ask ourselves whether we 
 are able, if not to perfect our instinct, which 
 I persist in believing perfect, at least to 
 recall it closer to our will, to unloose its 
 bonds, to restore its original freedom. This 
 question would demand a special study. In 
 the meantime, it appears fairly probable 
 that, by drawing habitually and systemat- 
 
 192
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 ically closer to material forces and facts, to 
 all that which, in a word that expresses 
 enormous things, we call nature, we can 
 diminish by so much daily the distance 
 which instinct will have to cover in order 
 to come to our aid. This distance, as yet 
 inappreciable in savages and in simple and 
 humble men, increases with every step taken 
 by our education and civilisation. I am 
 persuaded that it could be proved that a 
 peasant or workman, even if he be the less 
 young and the less active, if overtaken by 
 the same disaster as his squire or employer, 
 has two or three chances more than the 
 latter of escaping safe and sound. In any 
 case, there is no accident of which the vic- 
 tim is not, a priori, in the wrong. It is 
 meet that he should say to himself, what 
 is literally true, that any other, in his place, 
 would have escaped; consequently, the ma- 
 jority of the risks which those around him 
 take remain forbidden to himself. His un- 
 
 193
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 consciousness, which here blends with his 
 future, is not "in form." Henceforth he 
 must distrust his luck. From the point of 
 view of the great dangers, he is a minus 
 habens, as they used to say in Roman law. 
 
 IX 
 
 For all this, when we consider the lack of 
 consistency of our body, the inordinate 
 power of all that surrounds it and the num- 
 ber of perils to which we expose ourselves, 
 our luck, compared with that of other living 
 beings, must needs appear prodigious. In 
 the midst of our machines, our various 
 apparatus, our poisons, our fires, our waters, 
 all the forces which we have more or less 
 mastered, but which are always ready to 
 rise in revolt, we risk our lives twenty or 
 thirty times oftener than the horse, for in- 
 stance, the ox or the dog. Now, in a street 
 or road accident, in a flood, an earthquake, 
 
 194
 
 The Psychology of Accident 
 
 a storm, a fire, in the fall of a tree or a 
 house, the animal will almost always be 
 struck, by preference to the man. It is ob- 
 vious that the latter's reason, his experience 
 and his more prudent instinct preserve him 
 to a great extent. Nevertheless, one would 
 say that there must be something more. 
 Granting equal risks and hazards and allow- 
 ing for intelligence and a more skilful and 
 certain instinct, the fact still remains that 
 nature seems to be afraid of man. She re- 
 ligiously avoids touching that frail body, 
 surrounds it with a sort of manifest and 
 unaccountable respect and, when, through 
 our own arrogant fault, we oblige her to 
 hurt us, she does us the least harm possible. 
 
 i9S
 
 IN PRAISE OF THE FIST
 
 IN PRAISE OF THE FIST 
 
 IT is well, in the holiday season of 
 summer, to occupy ourselves with the 
 aptitudes of our body, once more re- 
 stored to nature, and, in particular, with 
 the exercises that most increase its 
 strength, its agility and its qualities as 
 the body of a fine animal, healthy, 
 formidable, ready to face all life's ex- 
 igencies. 
 
 I remember, in this connection, that lately, 
 when writing of the sword, 1 I allowed my- 
 self to be carried away by my subject 
 and was guilty of a certain injustice towards 
 the only specific weapon with which nature 
 
 1 Cf. the essay entitled In Praise of the Sword in 
 The Double Garden. — Publishers' Note. 
 
 109
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 has endowed us: I mean the fist. This in- 
 justice I am anxious to repair. 
 
 The sword and the fist form each other's 
 complement and, if the expression be not 
 too ungracious, can keep house together 
 on excellent terms. But the sword is, or 
 should be, only an exceptional weapon, a 
 sort of ultima et sacra ratio. We should 
 not have recourse to it save with solemn 
 precautions and a ceremonial equivalent to 
 that wherewith we surround those criminal 
 trials which may end in a sentence of death. 
 The fist, on the contrary, is preeminently 
 the every-day, the human weapon, the only 
 weapon organically adapted to the sensi- 
 bility, the resistance, the offensive and de- 
 fensive structure of our body. 
 
 The fact is that, if we well examine our- 
 selves, we must rank ourselves, without 
 vanity, among the most unprotected, the 
 most naked, the most fragile, the mostbrittle 
 and flaccid beings in creation. Compare us, 
 
 200
 
 In Praise of the Fist 
 
 for instance, with the insect, so formidably 
 equipped for attack and so fantastically 
 armour-cased ! Contemplate, among 
 
 others, the ant, upon which you may heap 
 ten or twenty thousand times the weight 
 of its body without apparently incon- 
 veniencing it. Consider the cockchafer, 
 the least robust of the beetles, and weigh 
 what it is able to carry before the rings of 
 its abdomen crack or the casings of its fore- 
 wings yield. As for the resistance of the 
 stag-beetle, it is, so to speak, unlimited. 
 By comparison, therefore, we and the ma- 
 jority of mammals are unsolidified beings, 
 still in the gelatinous state and quite close 
 to the primitive protoplasm. Our skeleton 
 alone, which is as it were the rough sketch 
 of our definitive form, offers a certain con- 
 sistency. But how wretched is this skeleton, 
 which one would think constructed by a 
 child! Look at our spine, the basis of our 
 
 whole system, whose ill-set vertebrae hold 
 
 20 1 

 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 together only by a miracle, and our thoracic 
 cage, which presents only a series of 
 diagonals which we hardly dare touch with 
 the finger-tips. Now it is against this slack 
 and incoherent machine, which resembles an 
 abortive effort of nature, against this pitiful 
 organism, from which life tends to escape 
 on every side, that we have contrived 
 weapons capable of annihilating us even if 
 we possessed the fabulous armour-case, the 
 prodigious strength and the incredible vital- 
 ity of the most indestructible insects. We 
 have here, it must be agreed, a very curious 
 and a very disconcerting aberration, an 
 initial folly, peculiar to the human race, that 
 goes on increasing daily. In order to return 
 to the natural logic followed by all other 
 living beings, if we are permitted to use 
 extraordinary weapons against our enemies 
 of a different order, we ought, among our- 
 selves, among men, to employ only the 
 means of attack and defence provided by 
 
 202
 
 In Praise of the Fist 
 
 our own bodies. Were mankind to conform 
 strictly to the evident will of nature, the 
 fist, which is to man what its horns are to 
 the bull and its claws and teeth to the lion, 
 the fist should suffice for all our needs of 
 protection, justice and revenge. A wiser 
 race would forbid any other mode of com- 
 bat as an irremissible crime against the es- 
 sential laws of the species. At the end of a 
 few generations, we should thus succeed in 
 spreading and putting into force a sort of 
 panic-stricken respect of human life. And 
 how prompt and how exactly in accordance 
 with nature's wishes would be the selection 
 brought about by the intensive practice of 
 pugilism, in which all the hopes of military 
 glory would be centred. Now selection is, 
 after all, the only really important thing 
 that claims our preoccupation; it is the first, 
 the greatest and the most eternal of our du- 
 ties towards the race. 
 
 203
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 II 
 
 Meanwhile, the study of boxing gives us 
 excellent lessons in humility and throws a 
 somewhat alarming light upon the for- 
 feiture of some of our most valuable in- 
 stincts. We soon perceive that, in all that 
 concerns the use of our limbs — agility, dex- 
 terity, muscular strength, resistance to pain 
 — we have sunk to the lowest rank of the 
 mammals or the batrachians. From this 
 point of view, in a well-conceived hierarchy, 
 we should be entitled to a modest place be- 
 tween the frog and the sheep. The kick of 
 the horse, the butt of the bull, the bite of 
 the dog, are mechanically and anatomically 
 perfect. It would be impossible to im- 
 prove, by the most learned lessons, their in- 
 stinctive manner of using their natural 
 weapons. But we, the "Hominidae," the 
 proudest of the primates, do not know how 
 to strike a blow with our fist ! We do not 
 
 204
 
 In Praise of the Fist 
 
 even know which exactly is the weapon of 
 our kind! Look at two draymen, two 
 peasants who come to blows : nothing could 
 be more pitiable. After a copious and dila- 
 tory broadside of insults and threats, they 
 seize each other by the throat and hair, 
 make play with their feet, with their knees, 
 at random, bite each other, scratch each 
 other, get entangled in their motionless 
 rage, dare not leave go and, if one of them 
 succeed in releasing an arm, he strikes out 
 blindly and most often into space a series of 
 hurried, stunted and sputtering little blows ; 
 and the combat would never end if the 
 treacherous knife, evoked by the shame 
 of the incongruous sight, did not suddenly, 
 almost spontaneously leap from the pocket 
 of one of the two. 
 
 On the other hand, watch two pugilists: 
 no useless words, no gropings, no anger; 
 the calmness of two certainties that know 
 
 what lies before them. The athletic attitude 
 
 205
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 of the guard, one of the finest of which 
 the male body is capable, logically exhibits 
 all the muscles of the organism to the 
 best advantage. From head to foot, not a 
 particle of strength can now go astray. 
 Every one of them has its pole in one or 
 other of the two massive fists charged to 
 the full with energy. And the noble sim- 
 plicity of the attack! Three blows, no 
 more, the fruits of secular experience, 
 mathematically exhaust the thousand use- 
 less possibilities hazarded by the uninitiated. 
 Three synthetic, irresistible, unimprovable 
 blows. As soon as one of them frankly 
 touches the adversary, the fight is ended, to 
 the complete satisfaction of the conqueror, 
 who triumphs so incontestably that he has 
 no wish to abuse his victory, and with no 
 dangerous hurt to the conquered, who is 
 simply reduced to impotence and uncon- 
 sciousness during the time needed for all ill- 
 will to evaporate. Soon after, the beaten 
 
 206
 
 In Praise of the Fist 
 
 man will rise to his feet with no lasting 
 damage, because the resistance of his bones 
 and his organs is strictly and naturally pro- 
 portioned to the power of the human 
 weapon that has struck him and brought 
 him to the ground. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It may seem paradoxical, but the fact is 
 easily established that the science of boxing, 
 in those countries where it is generally 
 practised and cultivated, becomes a pledge 
 of peace and gentleness. Our aggressive 
 nervousness, our watchful susceptibility, 
 that sort of perpetual state of alarm in 
 which our jealous vanity moves, all these 
 arise, at bottom, from the sense of our 
 weakness and of our physical inferiority, 
 which toil as best they may to overawe, 
 with a proud and irritable mask, the men, 
 often churlish, unjust and malevolent, that 
 
 207
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 surround us The more that we feel our- 
 selves disarmed in the face of attack, the 
 more are we tortured by the longing to 
 prove to others and to persuade ourselves 
 that no one attacks with impunity. Cour- 
 age becomes the more touchy, the more in- 
 tractable in proportion as our anxiously-ter- 
 rified instinct, cowering within the body that 
 is to receive the blows, asks itself how the 
 bout will end. What will this poor prudent 
 instinct do if the crisis goes badly? It is 
 upon our instinct that we rely in the hour of 
 danger. Upon our instinct devolve the 
 anxiety of the attack, the care of the de- 
 fence. But we have so often in daily life 
 dismissed it from the control of affairs and 
 from the supreme council that, when its 
 name is called, it comes forth from 
 its retreat like one grown old in captivity 
 and suddenly dazzled by the light of day. 
 What resolution will it take? Where is it 
 to strike : at the eyes, the stomach, the nose, 
 
 208
 
 In Praise of the Fist 
 
 the temples, the throat ? And what weapon 
 is it to choose : the feet, the teeth, the hand, 
 the elbow, or the nails? It no longer 
 knows; it wanders about its poor dwelling, 
 which is about to be defaced; and, while, 
 dotingly, it pulls them by the sleeve, cour- 
 age, pride, vanity, spirit, self-esteem, all the 
 great and splendid, but irresponsible lords 
 envenom the stubborn quarrel, which at 
 last, after numberless and grotesque eva- 
 sions, ends in an unskilful exchange of 
 clamorous, blind, ataxic thumps, hybrid and 
 plaintive, piteous and puerile and indefi- 
 nitely impotent. 
 
 He, on the contrary, who knows the source 
 of justice which he holds in his two closed 
 fists has no need for self-persuasion. 
 Once and for all, he knows. Longanimity 
 emanates like a peaceful flower from his 
 ideal, but certain victory. The grossest 
 insult cannot impair his indulgent smile. 
 Peaceably he awaits the first act of violence 
 
 209
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 and is able to say to all and any that 
 offend him, "Thus far shall you go." A 
 single magic movement stops the insolence. 
 Why make this movement? He ceases even 
 to think of it, so certain is its efficacy. And 
 it is with a sense of shame, as of one 
 striking a defenceless child, that, in the 
 last extremity, he at length resolves to 
 raise against the most powerful brute the 
 sovereign hand that regrets beforehand its 
 too-easy victory. 
 
 210
 
 THE FORGIVENESS OF IN- 
 JURIES
 
 THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES 
 
 IT is not unprofitable to examine from 
 time to time the meaning of certain words 
 which clothe in an unchangeable garment 
 thoughts that have themselves become 
 transmuted. 
 
 To take for instance the word "forgive," 
 which appears, at first sight, one of the 
 most beautiful in the language: does this 
 word still, did it ever possess the sense of 
 almost divine amnesty which we assign to 
 it? Is it not one of the terms that best set 
 forth the good-will of men, inasmuch as it 
 contains an ideal that has never been real- 
 ised? When we say to one who has in- 
 jured us, "I forgive you and all is forgot- 
 ten," how much truth is there at the bottom 
 
 213
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 of this speech? At most, this, which is the 
 only engagement into which we can enter: 
 "I shall not try to harm you in my turn." 
 The remainder, which we believe ourselves 
 to be promising, does not depend upon our 
 own will. It is impossible for us to forget 
 the wrong that has been done us, because 
 the profoundest of our instincts, that of 
 self-preservation, has a direct interest in re- 
 membering it. 
 
 The man who, at a given moment, finds 
 his way into our lives is never known to 
 us as he is. For us he is only an image 
 which he himself outlines in our memory. 
 It is quite true that the life that animates 
 him has an indefinable, but powerful self- 
 revealing face. It conveys a host of 
 promises, which are probably deeper and 
 more sincere than the words or actions 
 that will erelong belie them. But this 
 great sign has little more than an ideal 
 value. We are in a world wherein, 
 
 214
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 
 
 either through force of circumstances or 
 as the result of an initial error, very 
 few beings live in accordance with the truth 
 which their presence there foretells. At 
 long last, our fretful experience teaches 
 us to take no further account of this too 
 mysterious face. A plain, hard mask covers 
 it and bears the impress of all the acts and 
 deeds that have affected us. Kindnesses 
 illumine it with attractive and delicate 
 colours, whereas offences channel it with 
 deep grooves. In reality, it is only under 
 this mask, modelled according to the recol- 
 lection of pleasures or cares, that we per- 
 ceive the man who approaches us; and to 
 say to him, if he have offended us, that we 
 forgive him is tantamount to telling him 
 that we do not recognise him. 
 
 215
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 II 
 
 It is a question of knowing what influence 
 this inevitable recognition will have upon 
 our relations with the man who has injured 
 us. In this, as in so many other respects, 
 as soon as our good-will is roused, its first, 
 as yet unconscious steps bring it back to the 
 old road of the religious ideal. At the sum- 
 mit of this ideal, we might set up, as a sym- 
 bol, the legendary group of the Christian 
 woman burying, at the risk of her life, the 
 execrated remains of Nero. There is no 
 denying that the action of this woman is 
 greater and goes farther beyond human rea- 
 son than the action of Antigone, which 
 dominates pagan antiquity. Nevertheless, 
 it does not exhaust the limits of Christian 
 forgiveness. Suppose that Nero be not 
 dead, but staggering on the last confines of 
 life and that an heroic rescue alone can 
 save him. The Christian will owe him this 
 
 216
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 
 
 rescue, even though she know for certain 
 that the life which she is restoring to him 
 will, at the same time, bring back the perse- 
 cution. She can rise higher still: imagine 
 that she have to choose in the same moment 
 of anguish between her brother and the 
 enemy who will doom her to destruction. 
 She will reach the topmost summit only by 
 preferring the enemy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Of this ideal, which is sublime even where 
 an infinite reward for it is taken into ac- 
 count, what are we to think in a world that 
 looks for nothing in another world? At 
 which of the three superhuman moments 
 shall we call him mad who flings himself 
 into one of those three abysses of forgive- 
 ness? We shall even to this day find a 
 few traces of footsteps around the first; 
 
 but no one will now stray around the two 
 
 217
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 others. Let us admit that we have here 
 a sort of heroic march of faith which is 
 no longer possible; but, taking away faith, 
 there nevertheless remains, even in the un- 
 reason of that ideal, something human that 
 is as it were a presentiment of what man 
 would like to do if life were not so cruel. 
 
 And let us not think that instances of 
 this kind, taken from the farthest ends of 
 imagination, are idle or absurd. Existence 
 constantly brings before us equivalents that 
 are less tragic, but no less difficult; and 
 the solution of the humblest cases of con- 
 science depends upon the spirit which pre- 
 sides over that of the loftiest. All that 
 we imagine on a large scale will end by 
 being realised on a small; and upon the 
 choice which we would make on the 
 mountain depends exactly that which we 
 will make in the valley. 
 
 218
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 
 
 IV 
 
 Moreover, we can learn to forgive as 
 completely as the Christian. We are no 
 more prisoners than he of this world which 
 we see with the eyes in our head. We need 
 only an effort similar to his, but directed 
 towards other gates, in order to escape 
 from it. The Christian, just like ourselves, 
 did not forget the injury; he did not 
 attempt the impossible ; but he first pro- 
 ceeded to drown any desire for revenge 
 in the divine immensity. This divine im- 
 mensity, more closely considered, is not 
 very different from our own. Both, in 
 reality, are but the feeling of the nameless 
 immensity wherein we struggle. Religion 
 raised every soul mechanically, so to speak, 
 to the heights which we ought to reach 
 by means of our own strength. But, as most 
 of the souls which it drew thither were 
 
 as yet blind, it made no vain endeavour to 
 
 219
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 give them an idea of the truths which we 
 perceive from those heights. They would 
 not have understood them. It contented 
 itself with describing to them pictures ap- 
 propriate and familiar to their blindness, 
 pictures which, for very different reasons, 
 produced nearly the same effects as the real 
 vision that strikes us at present. "We must 
 forgive offences because God wishes it and 
 has Himself set the most complete example 
 of forgiveness that it is possible to imag- 
 ine." This command, which we can fol- 
 low without opening our eyes, is exactly the 
 same as that given to us by the needs and 
 the profound innocence of all life at the 
 moment when we contemplate them from 
 a sufficient height. And, if this latter com- 
 mand does not, like the first, go so far as 
 to urge us to prefer our enemy because he is 
 our enemy, this is not to say that it is less 
 sublime, but that it addresses hearts which 
 are more disinterested and minds which 
 
 220
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 
 
 have learnt no longer to appraise an ideal 
 solely according as to whether it be more or 
 less difficult of attainment. In sacrifice, for 
 instance, in penance, in mortification, there 
 are, in this way, a whole series of spiritual 
 victories which are more and more painful, 
 but which are not really higher, because 
 they rise not in the human atmosphere, but 
 in the void above, where they shine not 
 only without necessity, but often in a very 
 hurtful fashion. The man who juggles 
 with balls of fire on the point of a steeple 
 is also doing a very difficult thing; yet 
 no one dreams of comparing his useless 
 courage with the devotion, nearly always 
 less dangerous though it be, of the man 
 who flings himself into the water or the 
 flames to save a child. In any case — and 
 perhaps more efficaciously than the other 
 — the command of which we were speaking 
 dispels all hatred, for it no longer springs 
 from a foreign will, it is born within our- 
 
 221
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 selves at the sight of an immense spectacle 
 in which men's actions assume their real 
 place and meaning. There is no more ill- 
 will, ingratitude, injustice or perversity, 
 there is not even any more selfishness, in 
 the magnificent and boundless night wherein 
 poor beings move, guided by a darkness 
 which each of them follows in exceeding 
 good faith, believing that he is fulfilling a 
 duty or exercising a right. 
 
 V 
 
 Let us not fear lest this vision, together 
 with so many others which are grander 
 and no less exact and which should always 
 be present to our eyes, let us not fear lest 
 it should disarm us and make victims or 
 dupes of us in a life of vaster and harsher 
 realities. There are very few among us 
 that have need to strengthen their means 
 of defence, to whet their prudence, their 
 
 222
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 
 
 mistrust or their selfishness. Life's instinct 
 and experience provide for this but too 
 lavishly. We are never in danger of losing 
 our equilibrium on the side opposed to our 
 petty daily interests. All the efforts of a 
 watchful thought suffice only with great 
 difficulty to keep us erect. But it is no 
 matter for indifference to others and espe- 
 cially to ourselves whether our movements 
 of attack and defence are outlined against 
 the dull background of hatred, contempt 
 and disenchantment or against the trans- 
 parent horizon of indulgence and of the 
 silent forgiveness that explains and under- 
 stands. Above all, as the years pass, let 
 us keep to the humble lessons of experience. 
 There is in these lessons a dull and heavy 
 part that belongs by right to instinct and 
 descends to the necessary clay-soil of life. 
 There is no need to occupy ourselves with 
 it: it buds and multiplies prodigiously in 
 
 the unconscious. But there is a purer and 
 
 223
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 more subtle part which we must learn to 
 catch and hold before it evaporates in space. 
 Every act allows of as many different in- 
 terpretations as there are diverse forces 
 in our intelligence. The lowest of them 
 appear at first the simplest, the most natural 
 and just, because they are the first to come, 
 the idlest, those requiring the least effort. 
 If we do not struggle without respite 
 against their cunning and familiar encroach- 
 ment, little by little they devour and poison 
 all the hopes, all the beliefs out of which 
 our youth had formed the noblest and most 
 fruitful regions of our mind. Soon there 
 would remain to us, towards the end of our 
 days, nothing but the most miserable resi- 
 due of wisdom. It is meet, therefore, that 
 the loftiest interpretation which we can 
 give of the facts that hustle us at every 
 moment should rise in proportion as the 
 gross treasure of the practical sense of 
 existence accumulates. According as our 
 
 224
 
 The Forgiveness of Injuries 
 
 sense of life increases in the soil by the 
 roots, it is indispensable that it should 
 ascend in the light by the fruits and flowers. 
 It is necessary that an ever-vigilant thought 
 should incessantly lift up, air and quicken 
 the dead-weight of the years. Moreover, 
 experience, seemingly so positive, so prac- 
 tical, so easy-going, so tranquil, so in- 
 genuous and so sincere, knows full well that 
 it hides some essential thing from us; and, 
 had we the strength to drive it to its most 
 secret retrenchments, we should end to a 
 certainty by wringing from it the supreme 
 avowal that, upon the upshot and when all 
 and everything is said, the loftiest interpre- 
 tation is invariably the truest. 
 
 225
 
 CONCERNING "KING LEAR"
 
 CONCERNING "KING LEAR" 
 
 IT is easy to prove that, of late years and 
 especially since the beginning of the 
 great romantic period, the realm of poetry 
 — which had hardly been touched upon 
 since the definite loss of the vast, but unin- 
 habitable provinces of the epic poem — has 
 gradually shrunk in dimensions and become 
 actually reduced to a few isolated towns in 
 the mountain. It will probably continue 
 there, long-lived and impregnable, and will 
 gain in purity and intensity all that it has 
 lost elsewhere in extent and abundance. 
 Little by little it will strip itself of its vain 
 didactic, descriptive and narrative orna- 
 ments, soon to be itself alone, that is to say 
 the only voice that can reveal to us the 
 
 229
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 things which silence hides from us, which 
 human speech no longer utters and which 
 music does not yet express. 
 
 Lyric poetry will always exist: it is im- 
 mortal, because it is necessary. But what 
 fate has the future or even the present in 
 store, I will not say for the dramatist or 
 playwright, but for the tragic poet proper, 
 for the writer who strives to maintain a 
 certain lyrical quality in his work by repre- 
 senting in it things greater and finer than 
 the things of real life? 
 
 It is certain that the lyric tragedy of the 
 Greeks, that classical tragedy as conceived 
 by Corneille and Racine, that the romantic 
 tragedy of the Germans and Victor Hugo 
 all derive their poetry from sources that are 
 definitely dried up. The great drama of 
 the crowds, in which it was believed that an 
 unknown and inexhaustible source had been 
 discovered, has hitherto yielded only 
 mediocre and indifferent results. And the 
 
 230
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 new mysteries of our modern life, which 
 have taken the place of all the others and in 
 the direction of which Ibsen attempted cer- 
 tain excavations, these mysteries have been 
 for too short a time in direct contact with 
 man to erect and visibly and efficaciously 
 to govern the words and actions of the 
 character of a play. And yet there is no 
 disguising the fact and the poetic instinct of 
 humanity has always felt its presentiment: 
 a drama is not really true until it is greater 
 and finer than life. 
 
 II 
 
 Let us, in the interval preceding the time 
 when the poets shall know whither to turn 
 their steps, examine one of the most famous 
 examples of those dramas which enlarge the 
 truth without violating it, one of those rare 
 dramas which, after more than three cen- 
 turies, still remain green and living in all 
 
 231
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 their parts : I allude to Shakspeare's King 
 Lear. 
 
 It is safe to declare, as I once said — not 
 without some little exaggeration, for it is 
 impossible to avoid exaggeration in the 
 light and exquisite attack of fever which 
 seizes all Shakspeare's devoted admirers 
 whenever one of his masterpieces is revived 
 — it is safe to declare, after surveying the 
 literatures of every period and of every 
 country, that the tragedy of the old king 
 constitutes the mightiest, the vastest, the 
 most stirring, the most intense dramatic 
 poem that has ever been written. Were 
 we to be asked from the height of another 
 planet which is the synthetic and represen- 
 tative play, the archetypal play of the hu- 
 man stage, the play in which the ideal of 
 the loftiest scenic poetry is most fully real- 
 ised, it seems to me certain that, after due 
 deliberation, all the poets of our earth, the 
 best judges in this exigency, would with one 
 
 232
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 voice name King Lear. They could only 
 for a moment weigh the claims of two or 
 three masterpieces of the Greek stage, or 
 else — for virtually Shakspeare can be com- 
 pared with none save himself — of that 
 other miracle of his genius, the tragic story 
 of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Prometheus, the Orestes, CEdipus Ty- 
 rannus are wonderful but isolated trees, 
 whereas King Lear is a marvellous forest. 
 Let us admit that Shakspeare's poem is less 
 clear, not so evident, not so visibly harmoni- 
 ous, not so pure in outline, not so perfect 
 in the rather conventional sense of the 
 word ; let us grant that it has faults as enor- 
 mous as its good qualities : this fact none the 
 less remains, that it surpasses all the others 
 in the mass, the rarity, the density, the 
 strange mobility, the prodigious bulk of the 
 
 233
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 tragic beauties which it contains. I know 
 that the total beauty of a work is not to be 
 estimated by weight or volume; that the 
 dimensions of a statue do not necessarily 
 bear a relation to its aesthetic value. Never- 
 theless, it cannot be denied that abundance, 
 variety and ampleness add certain vital, 
 unaccustomed elements to beauty; that it is 
 easier to be successful with one statue of 
 middling size and of a calm movement than 
 with a group of twenty statues of superhu- 
 man dimensions, endowed with passionate 
 and yet coordinate gestures; that it is less 
 difficult to write one tragic and mighty act 
 in which three or four persons play their 
 parts than to write five which are filled with 
 a whole moving crowd and which maintain 
 that same tragic and powerful note on an 
 equal level during a period five times as 
 long as the other. Well, by the side of 
 King Lear } the longest Greek tragedies 
 are little more than plays in one act. 
 
 234
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 On the other hand, if we try to compare 
 it with Hamlet, we shall probably find that 
 its thought is less active, less acute, less pro- 
 found, less quivering, less prophetic. By 
 way of compensation, however, how much 
 more vigorous, massive and irresistible does 
 the spirit of the work appear! Certain 
 clusters, certain rays of light on the plat- 
 form of Elsinore reach and, for a moment, 
 illumine, like gleams from beyond the tomb, 
 more inaccessible darknesses; but here the 
 column of smoke and flame lights up in a 
 permanent and uniform manner a whole 
 stretch of the night. The subject is simpler, 
 more general and more normally human, 
 the colouring more monotonous, but more 
 majestically and more harmoniously su- 
 perb, the intensity more constant and more 
 widespread, the lyricism more continuous, 
 more overflowing and more illusive and yet 
 more natural, nearer to the realities of 
 everyday life, more familiarly stirring, be- 
 
 235
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 cause it springs not from thought, but from 
 passion, because it surrounds a situation 
 which, although exceptional, is, neverthe- 
 less, universally possible, because it does not 
 necessarily require a metaphysical hero like 
 Hamlet and because it immediately affects 
 the primitive and almost invariable soul of 
 man. 
 
 IV 
 
 Hamlet, Macbeth, Prometheus, the 
 Orestes, CEdipus belong to a class of poems 
 which are more exalted than the others be- 
 cause they are unfolded on a sort of sacred 
 mountain girt about by a certain mystery. 
 This is what, in the hierarchy of the mas- 
 terpieces, places Hamlet incontestably 
 above Othello, for instance, although 
 Othello is as passionately, as profoundly 
 and, doubtless, more normally human. 
 They owe to this mountain which carries 
 
 them between heaven and earth the 
 
 236
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 best part of their sombre and sublime power. 
 Now, if we examine the formation of this 
 mountain, we become aware that the ele- 
 ments which compose it are borrowed from 
 a variable and arbitrary supernaturalism; 
 it is a "beyond" of a contestable character 
 and appearance, which are religious or 
 superstitious, transitory, therefore, or local. 
 But — and this it is that gives it a place apart 
 among the four or five great dramatic 
 poems of the world — in King Lear there is 
 no supernaturalism proper. The gods, the in- 
 habitants of the great imaginary worlds do 
 not meddle with the action; fatality itself is 
 here quite inward, is no more than passion 
 run mad; and yet the immense drama un- 
 ravels its five acts on a summit as high, as 
 overladen with spells, poetry and unwonted 
 anxieties as though all the traditional forces 
 of heaven and hell had vied in ardour to 
 superstruct its peaks. The absurdity of the 
 original anecdote (all the great master- 
 
 237
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 pieces, being intended to represent typical 
 actions of a necessarily far-fetched exclusive 
 and excessive character, are founded on a 
 more or less absurd anecdote) disappears in 
 the sublime magnificence of the height at 
 which it is developed. Study more closely 
 the structure of that summit: it is formed 
 solely of enormous human strata, of 
 gigantic blocks of passion, of reason, of 
 general and almost familiar sentiments, 
 overthrown, heaped up, superimposed by 
 an awful tempest, but one profoundly 
 suited to all that is most human in human 
 nature. 
 
 That is why King Lear remains the young- 
 est of the great tragic works, the only one 
 which time has not withered. It needs an 
 effort of our good-will, a forgetting of our 
 condition and of our present certainties for 
 us to be sincerely and wholly stirred by the 
 spectacle of Hamlet, Macbeth or CEdipns. 
 
 On the other hand, the wrath, the roars of 
 
 238
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 pain, the prodigious curses of the old man, 
 of the outraged father seem to issue from 
 our modern hearts and brains; they rise up 
 under our own sky ; and, in respect of all the 
 profound truths that form the spiritual and 
 sentimental atmosphere of our planet, there 
 is nothing essential to be added to them, 
 nothing to be withdrawn from them. Were 
 Shakspeare to return among us upon earth, 
 he could no longer write Hamlet or Mac- 
 beth. He would feel that the main august 
 and gloomy ideas upon which those poems 
 rest would no longer carry them, whereas 
 he would not need to alter a situation nor a 
 line in King Lear. 
 
 The youngest, the most unchangeable of 
 tragedies is also the most organically lyrical 
 dramatic poem that was ever realised, the 
 only one in the world in which the magnifi- 
 
 239
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 cence of the language does not once impair 
 the probability, the naturalness of the dia- 
 logue. There is not a poet but knows that 
 it is almost impossible on the stage to ally 
 beautiful images with natural expression. 
 There is no denying it: no scene in the 
 mightiest tragedy or in the most hackneyed 
 comedy, as Alfred de Vigny said, is ever 
 more than a conversation between two or 
 three people who have met to talk of their 
 affairs. They have therefore to talk; and, 
 in order to give us that which is the most 
 necessary illusion on the stage, the illusion 
 of reality, they must depart as little as pos- 
 sible from the language employed in every- 
 day life. But, in this rather elementary 
 life, we hardly ever express in words any- 
 thing that is brilliant or profound in our 
 inner existence. If our habitual thoughts 
 mingle with great and beautiful spectacles, 
 with the highest mysteries of nature, they 
 remain within ourselves in a latent condition, 
 
 240
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 in a condition of dreams, of ideas, of mute 
 feelings which, at the very most, betray 
 themselves sometimes by a word, a phrase 
 nobler or truer than those of our probable 
 and usual conversation. Now, the drama 
 being able to express hardly anything that 
 would not be expressed in life, it follows 
 that all the higher part of existence remains 
 unformulated there, lest it should shatter 
 the indispensable illusion. The poet has 
 therefore to choose: he will be lyrical or 
 merely eloquent, but unreal (and this is 
 the mistake of our classical tragedies, of 
 the plays of Victor Hugo and of almost 
 all the French and German romanticists, a 
 few scenes of Goethe excepted), or else he 
 will be natural, but dry, prosaic and dull. 
 Shakspeare did not escape the dangers of 
 this choice. In Romeo and Juliet, for in- 
 stance, and in most of his historical plays, 
 he pours forth into rhetoric and incessantly 
 
 sacrifices to the splendour, to the abundance 
 
 241
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 of his metaphors the imperious, essential 
 precision and commonplace of every speech 
 and cue. 
 
 VI 
 
 On the other hand, in his great master- 
 pieces he makes no mistake; but the very 
 manner in which he surmounts the diffi- 
 culty reveals all the gravity of the problem. 
 He achieves his end only with the aid of 
 a sort of subterfuge to which he always re- 
 sorts. As it seems to be accepted that a hero 
 who expresses his inner life in all its mag- 
 nificence cannot remain probable and human 
 on the stage except on condition that he be 
 represented as mad in real life (for it is 
 understood that here the mad alone express 
 that hidden life), Shakspeare systemati- 
 cally unsettles the reason of his pro- 
 tagonists and thus opens the dike that held 
 captive the swollen lyrical flood. Hence- 
 forward, he speaks freely by their mouths; 
 
 242
 
 Concerning "King Lear" 
 
 and beauty invades the stage without fear- 
 ing lest it be told that it is out of place. 
 Henceforward, also, the lyricism of his 
 great works is more or less high, more or 
 less wide in proportion to the madness of 
 his hero. Thus it is intermittent and re- 
 strained in Macbeth and Othello, because 
 the hallucinations of the Thane of Cawdor 
 and the rages of the Moor of Venice are no 
 more than passional crises; it is slow and 
 pensive in Hamlet, because the madness of 
 the Prince of Denmark is torpid and medi- 
 tative; but no otherwhere does it overflow 
 as in King Lear, torrential, uninterrupted 
 and irresistible, hurling together, in im- 
 mense and miraculous images, the oceans, 
 the forests, the tempests and the stars, be- 
 cause the magnificent insanity of the dispos- 
 sessed and desperate old king extends from 
 the first scene to the very last. 
 
 243
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE 
 FLOWERS
 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE 
 FLOWERS 
 
 I WISH merely to recall here a few facts 
 known to every botanist. I have made 
 not a single discovery and my modest con- 
 tribution is confined to a few elementary 
 observations. I need hardly say that I have 
 no intention of reviewing all the proofs of 
 intelligence which the plants give us. These 
 proofs are innumerable and continual, es- 
 pecially among the flowers, in which the 
 effort of vegetable life towards light and 
 understanding is concentrated. 
 
 Though there be plants and flowers that 
 are awkward or unlucky, there is none that 
 is wholly devoid of wisdom and ingenuity. 
 All exert themselves to accomplish their 
 
 247
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 work, all have the magnificent ambition to 
 overrun and conquer the surface of the 
 globe by endlessly multiplying that form of 
 existence which they represent. To attain 
 this object, they have, because of the law 
 that chains them to the soil, to overcome 
 difficulties much greater than those opposed 
 to the increase of the animals. And there- 
 fore the majority of them have recourse to 
 combinations, to a machinery, to traps 
 which, in regard to such matters as mech- 
 anism, ballistics, aerial navigation and the 
 observation of insects, have often antici- 
 pated the inventions and acquirements of 
 man. 
 
 II 
 
 It would be superfluous once more to trace 
 the picture of the great systems of floral 
 fertilisation: the play of stamens and pistil, 
 the seduction of perfumes, the appeal of 
 harmonious and dazzling colours, the 
 
 248
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 concoction of nectar, which is absolutely 
 useless to the flower and is manufactured 
 only to attract and retain the liberator 
 from without, the messenger of love — bee, 
 humble-bee, fly, butterfly or moth — that is 
 to bring to the flower the kiss of the dis- 
 tant, invisible, motionless lover. . . . 
 
 This vegetable world, which to us appears 
 so placid, so resigned, in which all seems 
 acquiescence, silence, obedience, meditation, 
 is, on the contrary, that in which impatience, 
 the revolt against destiny are the most 
 vehement and stubborn. The essential or- 
 gan, the nutrient organ of the plant, its 
 root, attaches it indissolubly to the soil. If 
 it be difficult to discover among the great 
 laws that oppress us that which weighs 
 heaviest upon our shoulders, in the case of 
 the plant there is no doubt : it is the law that 
 condemns it to immobility from its birth 
 to its death. Therefore it knows better 
 than we, who disseminate our efforts, 
 
 249
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 against what first to rise in revolt. And the 
 energy of its fixed idea, mounting from the 
 darkness of the roots to become organised 
 and full-blown in the flower, is an incom- 
 parable spectacle. It exerts itself wholly 
 with one sole aim: to escape above from 
 the fatality below, to evade, to transgress 
 the heavy and sombre law, to set itself free, 
 to shatter the narrow sphere, to invent or 
 invoke wings, to escape as far as it can, to 
 conquer the space in which destiny encloses 
 it, to approach another kingdom, to pene- 
 trate into a moving and active world. . . . 
 Is the fact that it attains its object not as 
 surprising as though we were to succeed in 
 living outside the time which a different 
 destiny assigns to us or in making our way 
 into a universe freed from the weightiest 
 laws of matter? We shall see that the 
 flower sets man a prodigious example of 
 insubmission, courage, perseverance and in- 
 genuity. If we had applied to the removal 
 
 250
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 of various necessities that crush us, such as 
 pain, old age and death, one-half of the 
 energy displayed by any little flower in our 
 gardens, we may well believe that our lot 
 would be very different from what it is. 
 
 Ill 
 
 This need of movement, this craving for 
 space, among the greater number of plants, 
 is manifested in both the flower and the 
 fruit. It is easily explained in the fruit, or, 
 in any case, discloses only a less complex 
 experience and foresight. Contrary to that 
 which takes place in the animal kingdom 
 and because of the terrible law of absolute 
 immobility, the chief and worst enemy of 
 the seed is the paternal stock. We are in 
 a strange world, where the parents, unable 
 to move from place to place, know that 
 they are condemned to starve or stifle their 
 offpring. Every seed that falls at the foot 
 of the tree or plant is either lost or doomed 
 
 251
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 to sprout in wretchedness. Hence the im- 
 mense effort to throw off the yoke and con- 
 quer space. Hence the marvellous systems 
 of dissemination, of propulsion, of naviga- 
 tion of the air which we find on every side 
 in the forest and the plain : among others, 
 to mention, in passing, but a few of the 
 most curious, the aerial screw or samara of 
 the Maple; the bract of the Lime-tree; the 
 flying-machine of the Thistle, the Dande- 
 lion and the Salsafy; the detonating springs 
 of the Spurge; the extraordinary squirt of 
 the Momordica; the hooks of the erio- 
 philous plants; and a thousand other unex- 
 pected and astounding pieces of mechanism; 
 for there is not, so to speak, a single seed 
 but has invented for its sole use a complete 
 method of escaping from the maternal 
 shade. 
 
 It would, in fact, be impossible, if one 
 had not practised a little botany, to believe 
 the expenditure of imagination and genius 
 
 252
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 in all the verdure that gladdens our eyes. 
 Consider, for instance, the charming seed- 
 pots of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the five valves 
 of the Balsam, the five bursting capsules of 
 the Geranium. Do not forget, upon occa- 
 sion, to examine the common Poppy-head, 
 which we find at any herbalist's. This good, 
 big head shelters a prudence and a fore- 
 sight that deserve the highest praise. We 
 know that it holds thousands of tiny black 
 seeds. Its object is to scatter this seed as 
 dexterously and to as great a distance as 
 possible. If the capsule containing it were 
 to split, to fall or to open underneath, the 
 precious black dust would form but a use- 
 less heap at the foot of the maternal stalk. 
 But its only outlet is through apertures con- 
 trived right at the top of the capsule, which, 
 when ripe, bends over on its peduncle, sways 
 like a censer at the least breath of wind 
 and literally sows the seeds in space, with 
 the very action employed by the sower. 
 
 253
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 Shall I speak of the seeds which provide 
 for their dissemination by birds and which, 
 to entice them, as in the case of the Mistle- 
 toe, the Juniper, the Mountain-ash, lurk 
 inside a sweet husk ? We see here displayed 
 such a powerful reasoning faculty, such a 
 remarkable understanding of final causes 
 that we hardly dare dwell upon the subject, 
 for fear of repeating the ingenious mistakes 
 of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. And yet the 
 facts can be no otherwise explained. The 
 sweet husk is of no more use to the seed 
 than the nectar, which attracts the bees, is 
 to the flower. The bird eats the fruit be- 
 cause it is sweet and, at the same time, 
 swallows the seed, which is indigestible. 
 He flies away and, soon after, ejects the 
 seed in the same condition in which he has 
 
 received it, but stripped of its case and 
 ready to sprout far from the attendant 
 
 dangers of its birthplace. 
 
 254
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 IV 
 
 But let us return to simpler contrivances. 
 Pick a blade of grass by the roadside, from 
 the first tuft that offers, and you will per- 
 ceive an independent, indefatigable, unex- 
 pected little intelligence at work. Here, for 
 instance, are two poor creeping plants which 
 you have met a thousand times on your 
 walks, for we find them in every spot, down 
 to the most ungrateful corners to which a 
 pinch of soil has strayed. They are two 
 varieties of wild Lucern or Medick (Medi- 
 cago) , two "ill weeds" in the humblest 
 sense of the word. One bears a reddish 
 flower, the other a little yellow ball the 
 size of a pea. To see them crawling and 
 hiding among the proud grasses, one would 
 never suspect that, long before the illustri- 
 ous geometrician and physician of Syracuse, 
 they had discovered the Archimedean screw 
 and endeavoured to apply it not to the rais- 
 
 255
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ing of liquids, but to the art of flying. They 
 lodge their seeds in light spirals with three 
 or four convolutions, admirably constructed 
 to delay their fall and, consequently, with 
 the help of the wind, to prolong their jour- 
 ney through the air. One of them, the 
 yellow, has even improved upon the appa- 
 ratus of the red by furnishing the edges of 
 the spiral with a double row of points, with 
 the evident intention of hooking it, on its 
 passage, to either the clothes of the pedes- 
 trians or the fleece of the animals. It clearly 
 hopes to add the advantages of eriophily — 
 that is to say the dissemination of seed by 
 sheep, goats, rabbits and so on — to those of 
 anemophily, or dissemination by the wind. 
 The most touching side of this great effort 
 is its futility. The poor red and yellow 
 Lucerns have blundered. Their remark- 
 able screws are of no use to them: they 
 could act only if they fell from a certain 
 height, from the top of some lofty tree or 
 
 256
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 tall Graminea; but, constructed as they are 
 on the level of the grass, they have hardly 
 taken a quarter of a turn before already 
 they touch the ground. We have here a 
 curious instance of the mistakes, the grop- 
 ings, the experiments and the frequent little 
 miscalculations of nature; for only those 
 who have studied nature but very little will 
 maintain that she never errs. 
 
 Let us observe, in passing, that other 
 varieties of the Lucern (not to speak of the 
 Clover, another papilionaceous Leguminos a, 
 almost identical with that of which we are 
 now speaking) have not adopted this flying 
 apparatus, but keep to the primitive meth- 
 ods of the pod. In one of them, the Medx- 
 cago aurantiaca, we very clearly perceive 
 the transition from the twisted pod to the 
 screw or spiral. Another variety, the 
 Medicago scutellata, or Snail-medick, 
 rounds its screw in the form of a ball. It 
 would seem, therefore, that we are assist- 
 
 257
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ing at the stimulating spectacle of a sort 
 of work of invention, at the attempts of a 
 family that has not yet settled its destiny 
 and is seeking for the best way of ensuring 
 its future. Was it not perhaps, in the 
 course of this search that, having been de- 
 ceived in the spiral, the yellow Lucern 
 added points or hooks to it, saying to itself, 
 not unreasonably, that, since its leaves 
 attract the sheep, it is inevitable and right 
 that the sheep should assume the care of 
 its progeny ? And, lastly, is it not thanks to 
 this new effort and to this happy thought 
 that the Lucern with the yellow flowers is 
 infinitely more widely distributed than its 
 sturdier cousin whose flowers are red? 
 
 It is not only in the seed or the flower, but 
 in the whole plant, leaves, stalks and roots, 
 that we discover, if we stoop for a moment 
 
 258
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 over their humble work, many traces of a 
 prudent and quick intelligence. Think of 
 the magnificent struggle towards the light 
 of the thwarted branches, or the ingenious 
 and courageous strife of trees in danger. 
 As for myself, I shall never forget the ad- 
 mirable example of heroism given me the 
 other day in Provence, in the wild and de- 
 lightful gorges of the Loup, all fragrant 
 with violets, by a huge centenarian Laurel- 
 tree. It was easy to read on its twisted 
 and, so to speak, writhing trunk the whole 
 drama of its hard and tenacious life. A bird 
 or the wind, masters of destiny both, had 
 carried the seed to the flank of the rock, 
 which was as perpendicular as an iron cur- 
 tain; and the tree was born there, two 
 hundred yards above the torrent, inacces- 
 sible and solitary, among the burning and 
 barren stones. From the first hour, it had 
 sent its blind roots on a long and painful 
 search for precarious water and soil. But 
 
 259
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 this was only the hereditary care of a species 
 that knows the aridity of the South. The 
 young stem had to solve a much graver 
 and more unexpected problem: it started 
 from a vertical plane, so that its top, in- 
 stead of rising towards the sky, bent down 
 over the gulf. It was obliged, therefore, 
 notwithstanding the increasing weight of 
 its branches, to correct the first flight, stub- 
 bornly to bend its disconcerted trunk in the 
 form of an elbow close to the rock and thus, 
 like a swimmer who throws back his head, 
 by means of an incessant will, tension and 
 contraction to hold its heavy crown of 
 leaves straight up into the sky. 
 Thenceforward, all the preoccupations, all 
 the energy, all the free and conscious genius 
 of the plant had centred around that vital 
 knot. The monstrous, hypertrophied elbow 
 revealed, one by one, the successive solici- 
 tudes of a kind of thought that knew how 
 to profit by the warnings which it received 
 
 260
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 from the rains and the storms. Year by 
 year, the leafy dome grew heavier, with no 
 other care than to spread itself out in the 
 light and heat, while a hidden canker 
 gnawed deep into the tragic arm that sup- 
 ported it in space. Then, obeying I know 
 not what order of the instinct, two stout 
 roots, two fibrous cables, issuing from the 
 trunk at more than two feet above the 
 elbow, had come to moor it to the granite 
 wall. Had they really been evoked by the 
 tree's distress or were they perhaps wait- 
 ing providently, from the first day, for the 
 acute hour of danger, in order to increase 
 the value of their assistance? Was it only 
 a happy accident? What human eye will 
 ever assist at these silent dramas, which are 
 all too long for our short lives? 1 
 
 1 Let us compare with this the act of intelligence of 
 another root, whose exploits are related by Brandis in 
 his Ueber Leben und Polaritat. In penetrating into 
 the earth, it had come upon an old boot-sole : in order 
 to cross this obstacle, which, apparently, the root was 
 
 261
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 VI 
 
 Among the vegetals that give the most 
 striking proofs of intelligence and initiative, 
 the plants which might be described as "ani- 
 mated" or "sentient" deserve to be studied 
 in detail. I will do no more than recall the 
 delightful nervous terrors of the Sensitive- 
 plant, the shrinking Mimosa with which we 
 are all acquainted. There are other herbs 
 endowed with spontaneous movements that 
 are not so well known, notably the Hedysa- 
 rea } among which the Hedysarum gyrans, 
 or Moving-plant, acts in a very restless and 
 surprising fashion. This little Leguminosa, 
 which is a native of Bengal, but often 
 cultivated in our hothouses, performs a 
 sort of perpetual and intricate dance in 
 
 the first of its kind to find upon its road, it subdivided 
 itself into as many parts as there were holes left in the 
 sole by the stitching needle ; then, when the obstacle 
 was overcome, it came together again and united all 
 its divided radicles into a single homogeneous tap-root. 
 
 262
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 honour of the light. Its leaves are divided 
 into three folioles, one wide and terminal, 
 the two others narrow and planted at the 
 base of the first. Each of these leaflets is 
 animated with a different movement of its 
 own. They live in a state of rhythmical, 
 almost chronometrical and continuous agi- 
 tation. They are so sensitive to light 
 that their dance flags or quickens accord- 
 ing as the clouds veil or uncover that corner 
 of the sky which they contemplate. They 
 are, as we see, real photometers; and this 
 long before Crook's discovery of the nat- 
 ural otheoscopes. 
 
 VII 
 
 But these plants, to which should be added 
 the Droseras,theDionaeas and many others, 
 are nervous plants that already go a little 
 beyond the mysterious and probably im- 
 aginary ridge that separates the vegetable 
 
 263
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 from the animal kingdom. It is not neces- 
 sary to seek so high; and we find as much 
 intelligence and almost as much visible spon- 
 taneity at the other end of the world which 
 we are considering, in the low-lying places 
 where the plant is hardly distinct from clay 
 or stone. We have here the fabulous class 
 of the Cryptogamia, which can be studied 
 only under the microscope, for which reason 
 we will pass it by in silence, although the 
 work of the sporules of the Mushrooms, 
 Ferns and Horse-tails is incomparable in its 
 delicacy and ingenuity. But, among the aqua- 
 tic plants, the inhabitants of the original 
 ooze and mud, we can see less secret marvels 
 performed. As the fertilisation of their 
 flowers cannot be accomplished underwater, 
 each of them has thought out a different sys- 
 tem to allow of the dry dissemination of the 
 pollen. Thus, the Zosteras, that is to say, 
 the common Sea-wrack with which we stuff 
 our beds, carefully enclose their flower in 
 
 264
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 a regular diving-bell; and the Water-lilies 
 send theirs to blossom on the surface of the 
 pond, supporting and feeding it at the top 
 of an endless stalk, which lengthens as the 
 level of the water rises. The Villersia nym- 
 phoides, having no expanding stalk, simply 
 lets its flowers go: they rise to the surface 
 and burst like bubbles. The Trapa natans, 
 or Water-caltrop, supplies them with a sort 
 of inflated tumour: they shoot up and open. 
 Then, when the fertilisation is accomplished, 
 the air in the tumour is replaced by a muci- 
 laginous fluid, heavier than the water, and 
 the whole apparatus sinks back again to the 
 slime, where the fruits ripen. 
 
 The system of the Utricularia is even 
 more complicated. M. Henri Bocquillon de- 
 scribes it in his Vie des Plantes: 
 
 "These plants, which are common in 
 
 ponds, ditches, pools and the puddles of 
 
 peat-bogs, are not visible in winter, when 
 
 265
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 they lie on the mud. Their long, slim, 
 trailing stalk is furnished with leaves re- 
 duced to ramified filaments. At the axilla 
 of the leaves thus transformed, we see a sort 
 of little pyriform pocket with an aperture 
 in its pointed upper end. This aperture has 
 a valve, which can be opened only from the 
 outside inwards ; its edges are provided with 
 ramified hairs; the inside of the pocket 
 is covered with other little secretory hairs 
 which give it the appearance of velvet. 
 When the moment of efforescence has come, 
 the axillary utricles fill with air: the more 
 this air tends to escape, the more tightly it 
 closes the valve. The result is that it 
 imparts a great specific buoyancy to the 
 plant and carries it to the surface of the 
 water. Not till then do those charming 
 little yellow flowers come into blossom, re- 
 sembling quaint little mouths with more or 
 less swollen lips and palates streaked with 
 orange or rubiginous lines. During the 
 
 266
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 months of June, July and August, they dis- 
 play their fresh colours gracefully above 
 the muddy water, amid the vegetable decay 
 around them. But fertilisation has been ef- 
 fected, the fruit develops, all things play a 
 different part: the ambient water presses 
 upon the valve of the utricles, forces it in, 
 rushes into the cavity, weighs down the 
 plant and compels it to descend to the mud 
 again." 
 
 Is it not interesting to see thus gathered in 
 this immemorial little apparatus some of 
 the most fruitful and recent of human inven- 
 tions : the play of valves or plugs, the pres- 
 sure of fluids and air, the Archimedean 
 principle studied and turned to account? 
 As the author whom we have just quoted 
 observes, "The engineer who first attached 
 a rafting apparatus to a sunk ship little 
 thought that a similar process had been in 
 
 use for thousands of years." In a world 
 
 267
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 which we believe unconscious and destitute 
 of intelligence, we begin by imagining that 
 the least of our ideas creates new combina- 
 tions and relations. When we come to look 
 into things more closely, it appears infinitely 
 probable that it is impossible for us to 
 create anything whatsoever. We are the 
 last comers on this earth, we simply find 
 what has always existed and, like astonished 
 children, we travel again the road which 
 life had travelled before us. When all 
 is said, it is very natural and comforting 
 that this should be so. But we will return 
 to this point. 
 
 VIII 
 
 We must not leave the aquatic plants 
 without briefly mentioning the life of 
 the most romantic of them all: the legen- 
 dary Vallisneria, an hydrocharad whose 
 nuptials form the most tragic episode in the 
 
 268
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 love-history of the flowers. The Vallisneria 
 is a rather insignificant herb, possessing 
 none of the strange grace of the Water-lily 
 or of certain submersed verdant plants. But 
 it seems as though nature had delighted in 
 giving it a beautiful idea. Its whole exist- 
 ence is spent at the bottom of the water, in 
 a sort of half-slumber, until the moment of 
 the wedding-hour comes, when it aspires to 
 a new life. Then the female plant slowly 
 uncoils the long spiral of its peduncle, rises, 
 emerges and floats and blossoms on the sur- 
 face of the pond. From a neighbouring 
 stem, the male flowers, which see it through 
 the sunlit water, rise in their turn, full of 
 hope, towards the one that rocks, that 
 awaits them, that calls them to a fairer 
 world. But, when they have come half- 
 way, they feel themselves suddenly held 
 back: their stalk, the very source of their 
 life, is too short; they will never reach the 
 
 abode of light, the only spot in which the 
 
 269
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 union of the stamens and the pistil can be 
 achieved! . . . 
 
 Is there any more cruel inadvertence or 
 ordeal in nature? Picture the tragedy of 
 that longing, the inaccessible so nearly 
 attained, the transparent fatality, the 
 impossible with not a visible obstacle ! 
 It would be insoluble, like our own tragedy 
 upon this earth, were it not that an unex- 
 pected element is mingled with it. Did the 
 males foresee the disillusion to which they 
 would be subjected? One thing is certain, 
 that they have locked up in their hearts a 
 bubble of air, even as we lock up in our 
 souls a thought of desperate deliverance. It 
 is as though they hesitated for a moment; 
 then, with a magnificent effort, the finest, 
 the most supernatural that I know of in all 
 the pageantry of the insects and the flowers, 
 in order to rise to happiness they deliber- 
 ately break the bond that attaches them to 
 life. They tear themselves from their 
 
 270
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 peduncle and, with an incomparable flight, 
 amid bubbles of gladness, their petals dart 
 up and break the surface of the water. 
 Wounded to death, but radiant and free, 
 they float for a moment beside their heed- 
 less brides and the union is accomplished, 
 whereupon the victims drift away to perish, 
 while the wife, already a mother, closes 
 her corolla, in which lives their last breath, 
 rolls up her spiral and descends to the 
 depths, there to ripen the fruit of the heroic 
 kiss. 
 
 Must we spoil this charming picture, which 
 is strictly accurate, but seen from the side 
 of the light, by looking at it also from that 
 of the shadow? Why not? There are 
 sometimes on the shady side truths quite as 
 interesting as those on the bright. This 
 delightful tragedy is perfect only when we 
 consider the intelligence and the aspirations 
 of the species. But, when we observe indi- 
 viduals, we shall often see them act awk- 
 
 271
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 wardly and in the wrong way in this ideal 
 plan. At one time, the male flowers will 
 ascend to the surface when there are not 
 yet any pistilled flowers near. At another, 
 when the low water would permit them 
 easily to join their companions, they will 
 nevertheless mechanically and to no purpose 
 break their stalks. We here once more 
 establish the fact that all genius lies in the 
 species, in life or in nature, whereas the 
 individual is nearly always stupid. In man 
 alone does a real emulation exist between 
 the two intelligences, a more and more pre- 
 cise, more and more active tendency towards 
 a sort of equilibrium which is the great 
 secret of our future. 
 
 IX 
 
 The parasitic plants, again, present curi- 
 ous and crafty spectacles, as in the case of 
 
 the astonishing Cuscuta, commonly called 
 
 272
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 the Dodder. It has no leaves ; and no sooner 
 has its stalk attained a few inches in length 
 than it voluntarily abandons its roots to 
 twine about its chosen victim, into which 
 it digs its suckers. Thenceforth, it lives 
 exclusively upon its prey. Its perspicacity 
 is not to be deceived; it will refuse any sup- 
 port that does not please it and will go some 
 distance, if necessary, in search of the stem 
 of Hemp, Hop, Lucern or Flax that suits 
 its temperament and its taste. 
 
 This Cuscuta naturally calls our attention 
 to the Creepers, which have very remark- 
 able habits and which deserve a word 
 to themselves. Those of us who have 
 lived a little in the country have often 
 had occasion to admire the instinct, the 
 sort of power of vision, that directs the 
 tendrils of the Virginian Creeper or the 
 Convolvulus towards the handle of a rake 
 or spade resting against a wall. Move the 
 rake and, the next day, the tendril will have 
 
 273
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 turned completely round and found it again. 
 Schopenhauer, in his treatise Ueber den 
 Willen in der Natnr, in the chapter devoted 
 to the physiology of plants, recapitulates on 
 this point and on many others a host of ob- 
 servations and experiments which it would 
 take too long to set out here. I therefore 
 refer the reader to this chapter, where he 
 will find numerous sources and references 
 marked out for him. Need I add that, in 
 the past sixty or seventy years, these sources 
 have been strangely multiplied and that, be- 
 sides, the subject is almost inexhaustible? 
 
 Among so many different inventions, arti- 
 fices and precautions, let us mention also, 
 for instance, the foresight displayed by the 
 Hyoseris radiata, or Starry Swine's-succory, 
 a little yellow-flowered plant, not unlike the 
 Dandelion and often found on the walls of 
 the Riviera. In order to ensure both the 
 dissemination and the stability of its race, it 
 bears at one and the same time two kinds of 
 
 274
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 seeds : the first are easily detached and 
 are furnished with wings wherewith to 
 abandon themselves to the wind, while the 
 others have no wings, remain captive in the 
 inflorescence and are set free only when the 
 latter is decomposed. 
 
 The case of the Xanthium spinosum, or 
 Spiny Xanthium, shows us how well-con- 
 ceived and effective certain systems of dis- 
 semination can be. This Xanthium is a 
 hideous weed, bristling with barbaric 
 prickles. Not long ago, it was unknown in 
 Western Europe and no one, naturally, had 
 dreamt of acclimatising it. It owes its con- 
 quests to the hooks which finish off the cap- 
 sules of its fruits and which cling to the 
 fleece of the animals. A native of Russia, 
 it came to us in bales of wool imported 
 from the depths of the Muscovite steppes; 
 and one might follow on the map the stages 
 of this great emigrant which has annexed a 
 new world. 
 
 275
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 The Silene Italica, or Italian Catchfly, a 
 simple little white flower, found in abun- 
 dance under the olive-trees, has set its 
 thought working in another direction. Ap- 
 parently very timorous, very susceptible, to 
 avoid the visits of importunate and in- 
 delicate insects it furnishes its stalks with 
 glandular hairs, whence oozes a viscid fluid 
 in which the parasites are caught with 
 such success that the peasants of the South 
 use the plant as a fly-catcher in their 
 houses. Certain kinds of Catchflies, more- 
 over, have ingeniously simplified the sys- 
 tem. Dreading the ants in particular, they 
 discovered that it was enough, in order to 
 prevent them from passing, to place a wide 
 viscid ring under the node of each stalk. 
 This is exactly what our gardeners do 
 when they draw a circle of tar around 
 the trunk of the apple-trees to stop the 
 ascent of the caterpillars. 
 
 This leads to the study of the defensive 
 
 276
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 means employed by the plants. In an ex- 
 cellent popular work, Les Plantes originates, 
 to which I refer the reader who wishes for 
 fuller details, M. Henri Coupin examines 
 some of these quaint and startling weapons. 
 We have first the stimulating question of 
 the thorns, concerning which M. Lothelier, 
 a student at the Sorbonne, has made a 
 number of interesting experiments, result- 
 ing in the conclusion that shade and damp 
 tend to suppress the prickly parts of the 
 plants. On the other hand, whenever the 
 place in which it grows is dry and burnt by 
 the sun, the plant bristles and multiplies its 
 spikes, as though it felt that, as almost 
 the sole survivor among the rocks or in 
 the hot sand, it is called upon to make 
 a mighty effort to redouble its defences 
 against an enemy that no longer has a choice 
 of victims to prey upon. It is a remarkable 
 fact, moreover, that, when cultivated by 
 man, most of the thorny plants gradually 
 
 277
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 lay aside their weapons, leaving the care of 
 their safety to the supernatural protector 
 who has adopted them in his fenced 
 grounds. 1 
 
 Certain plants, among others the Bora- 
 ginea, supply the place of thorns with very 
 hard bristles. Others, such as the Nettle, 
 add poison. Others, the Geranium, the 
 
 1 Among the plants that have ceased to defend 
 themselves, the most striking case is that of the Lettuce : 
 "In its wild state," says the author whom I have 
 mentioned above, " if we break a stalk or a leaf, we 
 see a white juice exude from it, the latex, a substance 
 formed of different matters which vigorously defend 
 the plant against the assaults of the slugs. On the 
 other hand, in the cultivated species derived from the 
 former, the latex is almost missing, for which reason 
 the plant, to the despair of the gardeners, is no longer 
 able to resist and allows the slugs to eat it." 
 
 It is nevertheless right to add that this latex is rarely 
 lacking except in the young plants, whereas it becomes 
 quite abundant when the Lettuce begins to "cabbage" 
 and when it runs to seed. Now it is especially at the 
 commencement of its life, at the budding of its first, 
 tender leaves, that the plant needs to defend itself. 
 One is inclined to think that the cultivated Lettuce 
 loses its head a little, so to speak, and that it no longer 
 knows exactly where it stands. 
 
 278
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 Mint, the Rue, steep themselves in power- 
 ful odours to keep off the animals. But the 
 strangest are those which defend them- 
 selves mechanically. I will mention only 
 the Horse-tail, which surrounds itself with 
 a veritable armour of microscopic silica. 
 Moreover, almost all the Graminea, in 
 order to discourage the gluttony of the 
 slugs and snails, add lime to their tissues. 
 
 X 
 
 Before broaching the study of the compli- 
 cated forms of apparatus rendered neces- 
 sary by cross-fertilisation, among the thou- 
 sands of nuptial ceremonies that prevail in 
 our gardens let us mention the ingenious 
 ideas of some very simple flowers, in which 
 the grooms and brides are born, love and 
 die in the same corolla. The typical sys- 
 tem is well enough known : the stamens, or 
 male organs, generally frail and numerous, 
 
 279
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 are grouped around the robust and patient 
 pistil. But the disposition, the form, the 
 habits of these organs vary in every flower, 
 as though nature had a thought that 
 cannot yet become settled, or an imagina- 
 tion that makes it a point of honour never 
 to repeat itself. Often the pollen, when 
 ripe, falls quite naturally from the top of 
 the stamens upon the pistil; but very often, 
 also, pistil and stamens are of the same 
 height, or the latter are too far away, 
 or the pistil is twice as tall as they. Then 
 come endless efforts to succeed in meeting. 
 Sometimes, as in the Nettle, the stamens, at 
 the bottom of the corolla, stand cowering 
 on their stalk: at the moment of fertilisa- 
 tion, the stalk straightens out like a spring 
 and the anther, or pollen-mass, that tops it 
 shoots a cloud of dust over the stigma. 
 Sometimes, as in the Barberry, whose nup- 
 tials can be accomplished only in the bright 
 hours of a cloudless day, the stamens, far 
 
 280
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 removed from the pistil, are kept against 
 the sides of the flower by the weight of their 
 moist glands: the sun appears and evapo- 
 rates the fluid and the unballasted stamens 
 dart upon the stigma. Elsewhere are dif- 
 ferent things again : thus, in the Primroses, 
 the females are by turns longer and shorter 
 than the males : In the Lily, the Tulip and 
 other flowers, the too lanky bride does 
 what she can to gather and fix the pollen. 
 But the most original and fantastic system 
 is that of the Rue {Ruta graveolens) , a 
 rather evil-smelling medicinal herb of the 
 ill-famed emmenagogic tribe. The peace- 
 ful and docile stamens, drawn up in a circle 
 around the fat, squat pistil, wait expectant 
 in the yellow corolla. At the conjugal 
 hour, obeying the command of the female, 
 which apparently gives a sort of call by 
 name, one of the males approaches and 
 touches the stigma. Then come the third, 
 the fifth, the seventh, the ninth male, until 
 
 281
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 the whole row of odd numbers has rendered 
 service. Next, in the even ranks, comes the 
 turn of the second, the fourth, the sixth and 
 so on. Here in verity is love to order! 
 This flower which knows how to count ap- 
 pears to me so extraordinary that I at first 
 refused to believe the botanists; and I was 
 determined more than once to test its nu- 
 merical sense before accepting it. I have 
 ascertained positively that it but seldom 
 makes a mistake. 
 
 It is superfluous to multiply these in- 
 stances. A stroll in the woods or fields will 
 allow any one to make a thousand observa- 
 tions in this direction, each quite as curious 
 as those related by the botanists. But, 
 before closing this chapter, I would mention 
 one more flower: not that it displays any 
 extraordinary imagination, but because of 
 the delightful and easily-perceptible grace 
 of its movement of love. I allude to the 
 Nigella Damasccna, or Fennel-flower, 
 
 282
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 whose folk-names are charming : Love-in-a- 
 mist, Devil-in-a-bush, Ragged-lady; so 
 many happy and touching efforts of popular 
 poetry to describe a little flower that pleases 
 it. This plant is found in a wild state in the 
 South, by the roadside and under the olive- 
 trees, and is often cultivated in the North in 
 old-fashioned gardens. Its blossom is a 
 pale blue, simple as a floweret in a primi- 
 tive painting, and the "Venus' locks" or 
 "ragged locks" that give the Ragged-lady 
 its popular name in France are the light, 
 tenuous, tangled leaves that surround the 
 corolla with a "bush" of misty verdure. 
 At the source of the flower, the five ex- 
 tremely long pistils stand close-grouped in 
 the centre of the azure crown, like five 
 queens clad in green gowns, haughty and 
 inaccessible. Around them crowd hope- 
 lessly the innumerous throng of their 
 lovers, the stamens, which do not come up 
 to their knees. And now, in the heart 
 
 283
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 of this palace of sapphires and turquoises, 
 in the gladness of the summer days, begins 
 the drama without words or catastrophe 
 which one might expect, the drama of 
 powerless, useless, motionless waiting. But 
 the hours pass that are the flower's years: 
 its brilliancy fades, its petals fall and the 
 pride of the great queens seems at last to 
 bend under the weight of life. At a given 
 moment, as though obeying the secret and 
 irresistible command of love, which deems 
 the proof to have lasted long enough, with 
 a concerted and symmetrical movement, 
 comparable with the harmonious parabolas 
 of a five-fold jet of water, they all together 
 bend backwards, stoop and gracefully cull 
 the golden dust of the nuptial kiss on the 
 lips of their humble lovers. 
 
 XI 
 
 The unexpected abounds here, as we see. 
 A great volume might be written on the in- 
 
 284
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 telligence of the plants, even as Romanes 
 wrote one on animal intelligence. But this 
 sketch has no pretension to become a 
 manual of that kind; and I wish only to 
 call attention to a few interesting events 
 that happen beside us in this world wherein 
 we think ourselves, a little too vainglori- 
 ously, privileged. These events are not 
 selected, but taken, by way of instances, as 
 the random result of observation and cir- 
 cumstance. I propose, however, in these 
 short notes, to concern myself above all 
 with the flower, for it is in the flower that 
 the greatest marvels shine forth. I set aside, 
 for the moment, the carnivorous flowers, 
 Droseras, Nepenthes and the rest, which 
 approach the animal kingdom and would 
 demand a special and expansive study, in 
 order to devote myself to the true flower, 
 the flower proper, which is believed to be 
 motionless, insentient, passive and inani- 
 mate. 
 
 285
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 To separate facts from theories, let us 
 speak of the flower as though all that it has 
 realised had been foreseen and conceived in 
 the manner of men. We shall see later how- 
 much we must leave to it, how much take 
 away from it. For the present, let it take 
 the stage alone, like a splendid princess en- 
 dowed with reason and will. There is no 
 denying that it appears to be provided with 
 both ; and to deprive it of either we should 
 have to resort to very obscure hypotheses. 
 It is there, then, motionless on its 
 stalk, sheltering in a dazzling tabernacle 
 the reproductive organs of the plant. Ap- 
 parently, it has but to allow the mysterious 
 union of the stamens and pistil to be 
 accomplished in this tabernacle of love. 
 And many flowers do so consent. But 
 to many others there is propounded, big 
 with awful threats, the normally insoluble 
 problem of cross-fertilisation. As the re- 
 sult of what numberless and immemorial 
 
 286
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 experiments did they observe that self-fertil- 
 isation — that is the fertilisation of the stig- 
 ma by the pollen falling from the anthers 
 that surround it in the same corolla — rapidly 
 induces the degeneration of the species? 
 They have observed nothing, we are told, 
 nor profited by any experience. The force 
 of things quite simply and gradually elimi- 
 nated the seeds and plants weakened by 
 self-fertilisation. Soon only those survived 
 which, through some anomaly, such as the 
 exaggerated length of the pistil, rendering 
 it inaccessible to the anthers, were pre- 
 vented from fertilising themselves. These 
 exceptions alone endured, through a thou- 
 sand revolutions; heredity finally deter- 
 mined the work of chance; and the normal 
 type disappeared. 
 
 XII 
 
 We shall see presently what light these 
 
 explanations throw. For the moment, let 
 
 287
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 us stroll into the garden or the field, to 
 study more closely two or three curious in- 
 ventions of the genius of the flower. And 
 already, without going far from the house, 
 we have here, frequented by the bees, a 
 sweet-scented cluster inhabited by a most 
 skilled mechanic. There is no one, even 
 among the least countrified, but knows the 
 good Sage. It is an unpretending Labiata 
 and bears a very modest flower, which 
 opens violently, like a hungry mouth, to 
 snap the rays of the sun in passing. For 
 that matter, it presents a large number of 
 varieties, not all of which — this is a curious 
 detail — have adopted or carried to the 
 same pitch of perfection the system of fer- 
 tilisation which we are about to examine. 
 But I am concerned here only with the most 
 common Sage, that which, at this moment, 
 as though to celebrate spring's passage, 
 covers with violet draperies all the walls of 
 my terraces of olive-trees. I assure you that 
 
 288
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 the balconies of the great marble palaces 
 that await the kings were never more luxuri- 
 ously, more happily, more fragrantly 
 adorned. One seems to catch the very per- 
 fumes of the light of the sun at its hottest, 
 when noon-day strikes. . . . 
 
 To come to details, the stigma, or female 
 organ, of the flower is contained in the 
 upper lip, which forms a sort of hood, in 
 which are also the two stamens, or male 
 organs. To prevent these from fertilising 
 the stigma which shares the same nuptial 
 tent, this stigma is twice as long as they, 
 so that they have no hope of reaching it. 
 Moreover, in order to avoid any accident, 
 the flower has made itself protenandrous, 
 that is to say, the stamens ripen before 
 the pistil, so that, when the female is 
 fit to conceive, the males have already dis- 
 appeared. It is necessary, therefore, 
 that an external force should intervene to 
 accomplish the union by carrying a foreign 
 
 289
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 pollen to the abandoned stigma. A cer- 
 tain number of flowers, the anemophilous 
 flowers, leave this care to the wind. But 
 the Sage — and this is the more general case 
 — is entomophilous, that is to say, it loves 
 insects and relies upon their collaboration 
 alone. Still, it is quite aware, for it knows 
 many things, that it lives in a world where 
 it is best to expect no sympathy, no chari- 
 table aid. It does not waste time, there- 
 fore, in making useless appeals to the 
 courtesy of the bee. The bee, like all that 
 struggles against death in this world of 
 ours, exists only for herself and for her 
 kind and is in no way concerned to render 
 a service to the flowers that feed her. How 
 shall she be obliged, in spite of herself, or at 
 least unconsciously, to fulfil her matri- 
 monial office? Observe the wonderful 
 love-trap contrived by the Sage: right at 
 the back of its tent of violet silk, it distils 
 a few drops of nectar; this is the bait. But, 
 
 290
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 barring the access to the sugary fluid, stand 
 two parallel stalks, somewhat similar to the 
 uprights of a Dutch drawbridge. Right at 
 the top of each stalk is a great sack, the 
 anther, overflowing with pollen; at the 
 bottom, two smaller sacks serve as a coun- 
 terpoise. When the bee enters the flower, 
 in order to reach the nectar she has to push 
 the small sacks with her head. The two 
 stalks, which turn on an axis, at once topple 
 over and the upper anthers come down and 
 touch the sides of the insect, whom they 
 cover with fertilising dust. No sooner has 
 the bee departed than the springy pivots 
 fly back and replace the mechanism in its 
 first position; and all is ready to repeat the 
 work at the next visit. 
 
 However, this is only the first half of the 
 play : the sequel is enacted in another 
 scene. In a neighbouring flower, whose 
 stamens have just withered, enters upon 
 the stage the pistil that awaits the pollen. 
 
 291
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 It issues slowly from the hood, lengthens 
 out, stoops, curves down, becomes forked 
 so as, in its turn, to bar the entrance to the 
 tent. On its way to the nectar, the head 
 of the bee passes freely under the hanging 
 fork, which, however, grazes her back and 
 sides exactly at the spots touched by the 
 stamens. The two-cleft stigma greedily 
 absorbs the silvery dust; and the impregna- 
 tion is accomplished. It is easy, for 
 that matter, by introducing a straw or the 
 end of a match, to set the apparatus going 
 and to take stock of the striking and mar- 
 vellous combination and precision of all its 
 movements. 
 
 The varieties of the Sage are very many 
 — they number about five hundred — and I 
 will spare you the majority of their scien- 
 tific names, which are not always pretty: 
 Salvia pratensls, officinalis (our Garden 
 Sage) iHorminum, Horminoides , glutinosa, 
 
 Sclarea, Romeri, azurea, Pitcheri, splen- 
 
 292
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 dens (the magnificent Sage of our baskets) 
 and so on. There is not, perhaps, one but 
 has modified some detail of the machinery 
 which we have just examined. A few — and 
 this, I think, is a doubtful improvement — 
 have doubled and sometimes trebled the 
 length of the pistil, so that it not only 
 emerges from the hood, but makes a wide 
 plume-like curve in front of the entrance 
 to the flower. They thus avoid the just- 
 possible danger of the fertilisation of the 
 stigma by the anthers dwelling in the same 
 hood; but, on the other hand, it may hap- 
 pen, if the protenandry be not strict, that 
 the insect, on leaving the flower, deposits on 
 the stigma the pollen of the very anthers 
 with which the stigma cohabits. Others 
 in the movement of the lever, make the an- 
 thers diverge farther apart so as to strike 
 the sides of the animal with greater pre- 
 cision. Others, lastly, have not succeeded 
 in arranging and adjusting every part of the 
 
 293
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 mechanism. I find, for instance, not far 
 from my violet Sage, near the well, under 
 a cluster of Oleanders, a family of white 
 flowers tinted with pale lilac which 
 have no suggestion or trace of a lever. 
 The stamens and the stigma are heaped up 
 promiscuously in the middle of the corolla. 
 All seems left to chance and disorganised. 
 
 I have no doubt that it would be possible, 
 to any one collecting the very numerous 
 varieties of this Labiata, to reconstruct the 
 whole history, to follow all the stages of the 
 invention, from the primitive disorder of 
 the white Sage under my eyes to the latest 
 improvements of the Salvia pratensis. What 
 conclusion are we to draw? Is the system 
 still in the experimental stage among the 
 aromatic tribe? Has it not yet left the 
 period of models and "trial trips," as in 
 the case of the Archimedean screw in the 
 Saintfoin family? Has the excellence of 
 the automatic lever not yet been unani- 
 
 294
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 mously admitted? Can it be, then, that 
 everything is not unchangeable and pre- 
 established; and are they still discussing and 
 experimenting in this world which we be- 
 lieve to be fatally, organically regular? 1 
 
 1 For nearly four years, I have been engaged upon 
 a series of experiments in the hybridisation of Sages, 
 artificially fertilising (first taking the usual precautions 
 against any interference of wind or insects) a variety of 
 which the floral mechanism has reached a high state of 
 perfection with the pollen of a very backward variety ; 
 and vice versa. My observations are not yet suffi- 
 ciently numerous to permit me to give any details or 
 conclusions here. Nevertheless, it already appears as 
 if a general law were being evolved, namely that the 
 backward Sage readily adopts the improvements of the 
 more advanced variety, whereas the latter is not so 
 prone to accept the defects of the first. This would 
 tend to throw an interesting side-light upon the opera- 
 tions, the habits, the preferences, the tastes of nature 
 at her best. But these experiments cannot possibly be 
 completed in so short a period, because of the time 
 lost in collecting the different varieties, of the number- 
 less proofs and counter-proofs required and so on. It 
 would be premature, therefore, as yet to draw the 
 slightest conclusion from them. 
 
 295
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 XIII 
 
 Be this as it may, the flower of most 
 varieties of the Sage presents an attractive 
 solution of the great problem of cross- 
 fertilisation. But, even as, among men, a 
 new invention is at once taken up, simpli- 
 fied, improved by a host of small indefatig- 
 able seekers, so, in the world of what 
 we may call mechanical flowers, the patent 
 of the Sage has been elaborated and in 
 many details strangely perfected. A pretty 
 general Scrophularinea, the common Louse- 
 wort, or Red-rattle (Pedicularis sylvatica), 
 which you must surely have noticed in the 
 shady parts of small woods and heaths, has 
 introduced some extremely ingenious modi- 
 fications. The shape of the corolla is 
 almost similar to that of the Sage; the 
 stigma and the two anthers are all three 
 contained in the upper hood. Only the little 
 
 296
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 moist tip of the pistil protrudes from the 
 hood, while the anthers remain captive. In 
 this silky tabernacle, therefore, the organs 
 of the two sexes are very close together and 
 even in immediate contact; nevertheless, 
 thanks to an enactment quite different from 
 that of the Sage, self-fertilisation is made 
 absolutely impossible. The anthers, in fact, 
 form two sacks filled with powder; each of 
 the sacks has only one opening and they are 
 juxtaposed in such a way that the openings 
 coincide and mutually close each other. 
 They are forcibly kept inside the hood, on 
 their curved, springy stalks, by a sort of 
 teeth. The bee or humble-bee that enters 
 the flower to sip its nectar necessarily pushes 
 these teeth aside; and the sacks are no 
 sooner set free than they fly up, are flung 
 outside and alight upon the back of the 
 insect. 
 But the genius and foresight of the flower 
 
 go farther than this. As Hermann Miiller, 
 
 297
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 who was the first to make a complete study 
 of the wonderful mechanism of the Louse- 
 wort, observes (I am quoting from a sum- 
 mary) : 
 
 "If the stamens struck the insect while 
 preserving their relative positions, not a 
 grain of pollen would leave them, because 
 their orifices reciprocally close each other. 
 But a contrivance which is as simple as it 
 is ingenious overcomes the difficulty. The 
 lower lip of the corolla, instead of being 
 symmetrical and horizontal, is irregular 
 and slanting, so that one side of it is higher 
 by a few millimetres than the other. The 
 humble-bee resting upon it must herself 
 necessarily stand in a sloping position. The 
 result is that her head strikes first one and 
 then the other of the projections of the 
 corolla. Therefore the releasing of the 
 stamens also takes place successively; and, 
 one after the other, their orifices, now freed, 
 
 298
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 strike the insect and sprinkle her with 
 fertilising dust. 
 
 "When the humble-bee next passes to 
 another flower, she inevitably fertilises it, 
 because — and I have purposely omitted this 
 detail — what she meets first of all, when 
 thrusting her head into the entrance to the 
 corolla, is the stigma, which grazes her just 
 at the spot where she is about, the moment 
 after, to be struck by the stamens, the exact 
 spot where she has already been touched by 
 the stamens of the flower which she has last 
 left." 
 
 XIV 
 
 These instances might be multiplied in- 
 definitely; every flower has its idea, its 
 system, its acquired experience which it 
 turns to advantage. When we examine 
 closely their little inventions, their diverse 
 methods, we are reminded of those enthrall- 
 ing exhibitions of machine-tools, of ma- 
 
 299
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 chines for making machinery, in which the 
 mechanical genius of man reveals all its re- 
 sources. But our mechanical genius dates 
 from yesterday, whereas floral mechanism 
 has been at work for thousands of years. 
 When the flowers made their appearance 
 upon our earth, there were no models 
 around them which they could imitate; they 
 had to derive everything from within them- 
 selves. At the period when we had not 
 gone beyond the club, the bow and the flail; 
 in the comparatively recent days when we 
 conceived the spinning-wheel, the pulley, 
 the tackle, the ram; at the time — it was 
 last year, so to speak — when our master- 
 pieces were the catapult, the clock and the 
 weaving-loom, the Sage had contrived the 
 uprights and counterweights of its lever of 
 precision and the Lousewort its sacks closed 
 up as though for a scientific experiment, the 
 successive releasing of its springs and the 
 combination of its inclined planes. Who, 
 
 300
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 say a hundred years ago, dreamt of the 
 properties of the screw which the Maple 
 and the Lime-tree have been turning to use 
 since the birth of the trees ? When shall we 
 succeed in building a parachute or a flying- 
 machine as rigid, as light, as subtle and as 
 safe as that of the Dandelion? When shall 
 we discover the secret of cutting in so frail 
 a fabric as the silk of the petals a spring as 
 powerful as that which projects into space 
 the golden pollen of the Spanish Broom? 
 As for the Momordica, or Squirting Cu- 
 cumber, whose name I mentioned at the be- 
 ginning of this little study, who shall tell 
 us the mystery of its miraculous strength? 
 Do you know the Momordica? It is a 
 humble Cucurbitacea, common enough 
 along the Mediterranean coast. Its prickly 
 fruit, which resembles a small cucumber, is 
 endowed with inexplicable vitality and 
 energy. You have but to touch it, at the 
 moment of its maturity, and it suddenly 
 
 301
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 quits its peduncle by means of a convulsive 
 contraction and shoots through the hole 
 produced by the wrench, mingled with 
 numerous seeds, a mucilaginous stream of 
 such wonderful intensity that it carries the 
 seed to four or five yards' distance from 
 the natal plant. The action is as extraordi- 
 nary, in proportion, as though we were to 
 succeed in emptying ourselves with a single 
 spasmodic movement and in precipitating 
 all our organs, our viscera and our blood to 
 a distance of half a mile from our skin and 
 skeleton. 
 
 A large number of seeds besides have 
 ballistic methods and employ sources of 
 energy that are more or less unknown to 
 us. Remember, for instance, the explosions 
 of the Colza and the Heath. But one of 
 the great masters of vegetable artillery 
 is the Spurge. The Spurge is an Euphor- 
 biacea of our climes, a tall and fairly orna- 
 mental "weed," which often exceeds the 
 
 302
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 height of a man. I have a branch of 
 Spurge on my table at this moment steeped 
 in a glass of water. It has trifid, greenish 
 berries, which contain the seeds. From 
 time to time, one of these berries bursts 
 with a loud report; and the seeds, gifted 
 with a prodigious initial velocity, strike the 
 furniture and the walls on every side. If 
 one of them hits your face, you feel as 
 though you had been stung by an insect, 
 so extraordinary is the penetrating force of 
 these tiny seeds, each no larger than a 
 pin's head. Examine the berry, look for 
 the springs that give it life: you shall 
 not find the secret of this force, which is 
 as invisible as that of our nerves. 
 
 The Spanish Broom {Spartiam junceum) 
 has not only pods, but flowers fitted with 
 springs. You may have remarked the 
 wonderful plant. It is the proudest rep- 
 resentative of this powerful family of 
 the Brooms. Greedy of life, poor, sober, 
 
 303
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 robust, rejecting no soil, no trial, it forms 
 ialong the paths and in the mountains of 
 the South huge, tufted balls, sometimes 
 three yards high, which, between May and 
 June, are covered with a magnificent bloom 
 of pure gold, whose perfumes, mingling 
 with those of its habitual neighbour, the 
 Honeysuckle, spread under the fury of a 
 fierce sun delights that are not to be 
 described save by evoking celestial dews, 
 Elysian springs, cool streams and starry 
 transparencies in the hollow of azure grot- 
 toes. . . . 
 
 The flower of this Broom, like that of 
 all the papilionaceous heguminosa, resem- 
 bles the flowers of the Peas of our gardens; 
 and its lower petals, shaped like the beak 
 of a galley, contain hermetically the sta- 
 mens and the pistil. So long as it is not ripe, 
 the bee who explores it finds it impene- 
 trable. But, as soon as the moment of 
 ouberty arrives for the captive bride and 
 
 304 
 
 *
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 grooms, the beak bends under the weight 
 of the insect that rests upon it; and the 
 golden chamber bursts voluptuously, hurl- 
 ing with violence and afar, over the visitor, 
 over the flowers around, a cloud of lumi- 
 nous dust, which a broad petal, shaped like 
 a penthouse, casts down upon the stigma to 
 be impregnated. 
 
 XV 
 
 Let us leave the seeds and return to the 
 flowers. As I have said, one could pro- 
 long indefinitely the list of their ingenious 
 inventions. I refer those who might wish 
 to study these problems thoroughly to the 
 works of Christian Konrad Sprcngel, who 
 was the first, in 1793, in his curious volume, 
 Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur im 
 Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen, to 
 analyse the functions of the different organs 
 in the Orchids; next, to the books of 
 
 305
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 Charles Darwin, Dr. Hermann Miiller of 
 Lippstadt, Hildebrand, Delpino the Italian, 
 Sir William Hooker, Robert Brown and 
 many others. 
 
 We shall find the most perfect and the 
 most harmonious manifestations of vege- 
 table intelligence among the Orchids. In 
 these writhing and eccentric flowers, the 
 genius of the plant touches its extreme 
 point and with an unusual fire pierces 
 the wall that separates the kingdoms. For 
 that matter, this name of Orchid must 
 not be allowed to mislead us or make us 
 believe that we have here to do only with 
 rare and precious flowers, with those hot- 
 house queens which seem to claim the care 
 of the goldsmith rather than the gardener. 
 Our native wild flora, which comprises all 
 our modest "weeds," numbers more than 
 twenty-five species of Orchids, including 
 just the most ingenious and complicated. 
 
 It is these which Charles Darwin studied 
 
 306
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 in his book, On the Various Contrivances 
 by which Orchids are fertilised by Insects, 
 which is the wonderful history of the most 
 heroic efforts of the soul of the flower. It is 
 out of the question that I should here, in 
 a few lines, summarise that abundant and 
 fairylike biography. Nevertheless, since we 
 are on the subject of the intelligence of 
 flowers, it is necessary that we should give 
 some idea of the methods and the mental 
 habits of that which excels all the others 
 in the art of compelling the bee or the 
 butterfly to do exactly what it wishes, in 
 the prescribed form and time. 
 
 XVI 
 
 It is not easy to explain without diagrams 
 the extraordinarily complex mechanism of 
 the Orchid. Nevertheless, I will try to give 
 a sufficient idea of it with the aid of more or 
 less approximate comparisons, while avoid- 
 
 307
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 ing as far as possible the use of technical 
 terms such as retinaculum, labellum, rostel- 
 lum and the rest, which evoke no precise 
 image in the minds of persons unfamiliar 
 with botany. 
 
 Let us take one of the most widely 
 distributed Orchids in our regions, the 
 Orchis maculata, for instance, or rather, 
 because it is a little larger and therefore 
 more easily observed, the Orchis latifolia, 
 the Marsh Orchid, commonly known as the 
 Meadow-rocket. It is a perennial plant 
 and grows to a height of an inch or more. 
 It is fairly common in the woods and 
 damp meadows and it bears a thyrse of little 
 pink flowers which blossom in May and 
 June. The typical flower of our Orchids 
 represents pretty closely the fantastic and 
 yawning mouth of a Chinese dragon. The 
 lower lip, which is very long and which 
 hangs in the form of a jagged or den- 
 tate apron, serves as a landing-place for the 
 
 308
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 insect. The upper lip rounds into a sort of 
 hood, which shelters the essential organs; 
 while, at the back of the flower, beside the 
 peduncle, there falls a kind of spur or long, 
 pointed horn, which contains the nectar. 
 In most flowers, the stigma, or female or- 
 gan, is a more or less viscid little tuft which, 
 at the end of a frail stalk, patiently awaits 
 the coming of the pollen. In the Orchid, this 
 traditional installation has become irrecog- 
 nisable. At the back of the mouth, in the 
 place occupied in the throat by the uvula, 
 are two closely-welded stigmas, above which 
 rises a third stigma modified into an extraor- 
 dinary organ. At its top, it carries a sort 
 of little pouch, or, more correctly, a sort 
 of stoup, which is called the rostellum. This 
 stoup is full of a viscid fluid in which soak 
 two tiny balls whence issue two short stalks 
 laden at their upper extremity with a 
 packet of grains of pollen carefully tied up. 
 Let us now see what happens when an 
 
 309
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 insect enters the flower. She lands on the 
 lower lip, outspread to receive her, and, 
 attracted by the scent of the nectar, seeks 
 to reach the horn that contains it, right at 
 the back. But the passage is purposely 
 very narrow; and the insect's head, as she 
 advances, necessarily strikes the stoup. The 
 latter, sensitive to the least shock, is at once 
 ruptured along a convenient line and lays 
 bare the two little balls steeped in the viscid 
 fluid. These, coming into immediate con- 
 tact with the visitor's skull, fasten to it 
 and become firmly stuck to it, so that, 
 when the insect leaves the flower, she car- 
 ries them away and, with them, the two 
 stalks which rise from them and which 
 end in the packets of tied-up pollen. We 
 therefore have the insect capped with two 
 straight, bottle-shaped horns. The uncon- 
 scious artisan of a difficult work now visits 
 a neighbouring flower. If her horns re- 
 mained stiff, they would simply strike with 
 
 310
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 their pollen-masses the other pollen-masses 
 soaking in the vigilant stoup and no event 
 would spring from the pollen mingling with 
 pollen. But here the genius, the experience 
 and the foresight of the Orchid become ap- 
 parent. The Orchid has minutely calculated 
 the time needed for the insect to suck the 
 nectar and repair to the next flower; and it 
 has ascertained that this requires, on an 
 average, thirty seconds. We have seen that 
 the packets of pollen are carried on two 
 short stalks inserted into the viscid balls. 
 Now at the point of insertion there is, under 
 each stalk, a small membranous disc, whose 
 only function is, at the end of thirty seconds, 
 to contract and throw forward the stalks, 
 causing them to curve and describe an 
 arc of ninety degrees. This is the result 
 of a fresh calculation, not of time, on the 
 occasion, but of space. The two horns of 
 pollen that cap the nuptial messenger are 
 now horizontal and point in front of her 
 
 311
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 head, so that, when she enters the next 
 flower, they will just strike the two welded 
 stigmas under the pendent stoup. 
 
 This is not all and the genius of the 
 Orchid has not yet expended all its fore- 
 sight. The stigma which receives the blow 
 of the packet is coated with a viscid sub- 
 stance. If this substance were as powerfully 
 adhesive as that contained in the stoup, the 
 pollen-masses, after their stalks were 
 broken, would stick to it and remain fixed 
 to it whole; and their destiny would be 
 ended. This must not be; it is important 
 that the chances of the pollen should not 
 be exhausted in a single venture, but rather 
 that they should be multiplied to the great- 
 est possible extent. The flower that counts 
 the seconds and measures the lines is a 
 chemist to boot and distils two sorts of 
 gums : one extremely clinging, hardening as 
 soon as it touches the air, to glue the pollen- 
 horns to the insect's head; the other greatly 
 
 312
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 lenified, for the work of the stigma. This 
 latter is just prehensile enough slightly to 
 unfasten or loosen the tenuous and elastic 
 threads with which the grains of pollen are 
 tied up. Some of these grains cling to it, 
 but the pollinic mass is not destroyed; and, 
 when the insect visits other flowers, she will 
 continue her fertilising labours almost in- 
 definitely. 
 
 Have I expounded the whole miracle? 
 No; I have still to call attention to many 
 a neglected detail: among others, to the 
 movement of the little stoup, which, after 
 
 4 
 
 its membrane has been ruptured to unmask 
 the viscid balls, immediately lifts up its 
 lower rim in order to keep in good 
 condition, in the sticky fluid, the packet of 
 pollen which the insect may not have car- 
 ried off. We should also note the very 
 curiously combined divergence of the 
 pollinic stalks on the head of the insect, as 
 well as certain chemical precautions com- 
 
 313
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 mon to all plants; for the experiments made 
 quite recently by M. Gaston Bonnier seem 
 to prove that every flower, in order to pre- 
 serve its species intact, secretes poisons that 
 destroy or sterilise any foreign pollen. 
 This is about all that we see; but here, as 
 in all things, the real, the great miracle be- 
 gins where our power of vision ends. 
 
 XVII 
 
 I have just this moment found, in an 
 untilled corner of the olive-yard, a splendid 
 sprig of Loroglossum hircinum, a variety 
 which, for I know not what reason (per- 
 haps it is very rare in England), Darwin 
 omitted to study. It is certainly the most 
 remarkable, the most fantastic, the most 
 astounding of all our native Orchids. If it 
 were of the size of the American Orchids, 
 one could declare that there is no more 
 fanciful plant in existence. Imagine a 
 
 314
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 thyrse, like that of the Hyacinth, but twice 
 as tall. It is symmetrically adorned with 
 ill-favoured, three-cornered flowers, of a 
 greenish white stippled with pale violet. 
 The lower petal, embellished at its source 
 with bronzed caruncles, huge mustachios 
 and sinister-looking lilac buboes, stretches 
 out interminably, madly, unreally, in the 
 shape of a corkscrew riband of the colour 
 assumed by a drowned corpse after a 
 month's immersion in the river. From 
 the whole, which conjures up the 
 idea of the most fearsome maladies and 
 seems to blossom in some vague land of 
 ironical nightmares and witcheries, there 
 issues a potent and abominable stench as 
 of a poisoned goat, which spreads afar and 
 reveals the presence of the monster. I am 
 pointing to and describing this nauseating 
 Orchid because it is fairly common in 
 France, is easily recognised and adapts it- 
 self very well, by reason of its height and 
 
 315
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 the distinctness of its organs, to any experi- 
 ments that one might wish to make. We 
 have only, in fact, to introduce the tip of 
 a match into the flower and to push it 
 carefully to the bottom of the nectary, 
 in order, with the naked eye, to witness all 
 the successive revolutions of the process of 
 fertilisation. Grazed in passing, the pouch 
 or rostellum sinks down, exposing the little 
 viscid disc (the Loroglossum has only one) 
 that supports the two pollen-stalks. As 
 soon as this disc violently grips the end of 
 the wood, the two cells that contain the 
 pollen-balls open longitudinally; and, when 
 the match is withdrawn, its tip is firmly 
 capped with two stiff, diverging horns, 
 ending in two golden balls. Unfortunately, 
 we do not here, as in the experiment with 
 the Orchis latifolia, enjoy the charming 
 spectacle offered by the gradual and precise 
 inclination of the two horns. Why are 
 they not lowered? We have but to in- 
 
 316
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 troduce the capped match into a neigh- 
 bouring nectary to ascertain that this 
 movement would be superfluous, the flower 
 being much larger than that of the Orchis 
 metadata or latifolia and the nectar-horn 
 arranged in such a way that, when the 
 insect laden with the pollen-masses enters 
 it, they just reach the level of the stigma 
 to be fertilised. 
 
 Let us add that it is important to the 
 success of the experiment to select a flower 
 that is quite ripe. We do not know when 
 the flower is ripe; but the insect and the 
 flower itself know, for the flower does not 
 invite its necessary guests, by offering them 
 a drop of nectar, until the moment comes 
 when all its apparatus is ready to work. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 This is the basis of the system of fertil- 
 isation adopted by the Orchid of our climes. 
 But each species, every family modifies and 
 
 317
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 improves the details in accordance with its 
 particular experience, psychology and con- 
 venience. The Orchis or Anacamptis 
 pyramidalis, for instance, which is one of 
 the most intelligent, has added to its lower 
 lip or labellum two little ridges which guide 
 the proboscis of the insect to the nectar and 
 compel her to accomplish exactly what is 
 expected of her. Darwin very justly com- 
 pares this ingenious accessory with the little 
 instrument for guiding a thread into the 
 fine eye of a needle. Here is another inter- 
 esting improvement: the two little balls 
 that carry the pollen-stalks and soak in the 
 stoup are replaced by a single viscid 
 disc, shaped like a saddle. If, following 
 the road to be taken by the insect's probos- 
 cis, we insert the point of a needle or a 
 bristle into the flower, we very plainly per- 
 ceive the advantages of this simpler and 
 more practical arrangement. As the bristle 
 touches the stoup, the latter is ruptured in 
 
 318
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 a symmetrical line and uncovers the saddle- 
 formed disc, which at once becomes 
 attached to the bristle. Withdraw the 
 bristle smartly and you will just have time 
 to catch the pretty action of the saddle, 
 which, seated on the bristle or needle, curls 
 its two flaps inwards, so as to embrace the 
 object that supports it. The purpose of 
 this movement is to strengthen the adhesive 
 power of the saddle and, above all, to en- 
 sure with greater precision than in the 
 Orchis latifolia the indispensable divergence 
 of the pollen-stalks. As soon as the saddle 
 has curled round the bristle and as the 
 pollen-stalks planted in it, drawn apart by 
 its contraction, are forced to diverge, the 
 second movement of the stalks begins and 
 they bend towards the tip of the bristle, in 
 the same manner as in the Orchid which 
 we have already studied. The two move- 
 ments combined are performed in thirty to 
 thirty-four seconds. 
 
 319
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 XIX 
 
 Is it not exactly in this manner, by means 
 of trifles, of successive overhaulings and 
 retouches, that human inventions proceed? 
 We have all, in the latest of our mechanical 
 industries, followed the tiny, but constant 
 improvements in the sparking, the carbu- 
 ration, the clutch and the speed-gear. It 
 would really seem as though ideas came to 
 the flowers in the same way as to us. The 
 flowers grope in the same darkness, en- 
 counter the same obstacles, the same ill-will, 
 in the same unknown. They have the same 
 laws, the same disillusions, the same slow 
 and difficult triumphs. They would appear 
 to possess our patience, our perseverance, 
 our self-love, the same varied and diversi- 
 fied intelligence, almost the same hopes and 
 the same ideals. They struggle, like our- 
 selves, against a great indifferent force that 
 ends by assisting them. Their inventive 
 
 320
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 imagination not only follows the same 
 prudent and minute methods, the same 
 tiring, narrow and winding little paths: it 
 also has unexpected leaps and bounds that 
 suddenly fix definitely an uncertain discov- 
 ery. It is thus that a family of great in- 
 ventors among the Orchids, a strange and 
 rich American family, that of the Catase- 
 tida, thanks to a bold inspiration, abruptly 
 altered a number of habits that doubtless 
 appeared to it too primitive. First of all, 
 the separation of the sexes is absolute : each 
 has its particular flower. Next, the pol- 
 linium, or mass or packet of pollen, no 
 longer dips its stalk in a stoup full of gum, 
 there awaiting, a little inertly and, in any 
 case, without initiative, the lucky accident 
 that is to fix it on the insect's head. It is 
 bent back on a powerful spring, in a sort 
 of cell. Nothing attracts the insect specially 
 in the direction of this cell. Nor have the 
 proud Catasetida reckoned, like the com- 
 
 321
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 mon Orchid, on this or that movement of 
 the visitor : a guided and precise movement, 
 if you wish, but nevertheless a contingent 
 movement. No, the insect no longer enters 
 a flower endowed with an admirable mech- 
 anism : she enters an animated and literally 
 sensitive flower. Hardly has she pitched 
 upon the magnificent outer court of copper- 
 coloured silk before long and nervous feel- 
 ers, which she cannot avoid touching, carry 
 the alarm all over the edifice. Forthwith 
 the cell is torn asunder in which the pollen- 
 mass, divided into two packets, is held 
 captive on its bent-back pedicel, which is 
 supported on a huge viscid disc. Abruptly 
 released, the pedicel straightens itself like 
 a spring, dragging with it the two packets 
 of pollen and the viscid disc, which are 
 violently projected outside. In consequence 
 of a curious ballistic calculation, the disc is 
 always flung first and strikes the insect, to 
 whom it adheres. She, stunned by the 
 
 322
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 blow, has but one thought: to leave the 
 aggressive corolla with all speed and take 
 refuge in a neighbouring flower. This is all 
 that the American Orchid wanted. 
 
 XX 
 
 Shall I describe also the curious and prac- 
 tical simplifications introduced into the gen- 
 eral system by another family of exotic 
 Orchids, the Cypripedea? Let us continue 
 to bear in mind the circumvolutions of 
 human inventions : we have here an amus- 
 ing counter-proof. A fitter, in the engine- 
 room, a preparator, a pupil, in the labora- 
 tory, says, one day, to his principal: 
 
 "Suppose we tried to do just the opposite? 
 Suppose we reversed the movement, sup- 
 pose we inverted the mixture of the fluids?" 
 
 The experiment is tried; and suddenly 
 from the unknown issues the unexpected. 
 
 One could easily believe the Cypripedea 
 
 323
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 to have held similar conversations among 
 themselves. We all know the Cypripedium, 
 or Ladies'-slipper: with its enormous shoe- 
 shaped chin, its crabbed and venomous air, 
 it is the most characteristic flower of our 
 hothouses, the one that seems to us the 
 typical Orchid, so to speak. The Cypri- 
 pedium has bravely suppressed all the com- 
 plicated and delicate apparatus of the 
 springy pollen-masses, the diverging stalks, 
 the viscid discs, the cunning gums and the 
 rest. Its clog-like chin and a barren, shield- 
 shaped anther bar the entrance in such a 
 manner as to compel the insect to pass its 
 proboscis over two little heaps of pollen. 
 But this is not the important point: the 
 wholly unexpected and abnormal thing is 
 that, contrary to what we have observed 
 in all the other species, it is no longer the 
 stigma, the female organ that is viscid, but 
 the pollen itself, whose grains, instead of 
 being pulverulent, are covered with a coat 
 
 324
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 so glutinous that it can be stretched and 
 drawn into threads. What are the advan- 
 tages and the drawbacks of this new ar- 
 rangement? It is to be feared that the 
 pollen carried off by the insect may adhere 
 to any object other than the stigma; on the 
 other hand, the stigma is dispensed from 
 secreting the fluid destined to sterilise every 
 foreign pollen. In any case, this problem 
 would demand a special study. In the 
 same way, there are patents whose useful- 
 ness we do not grasp at once. 
 
 XXI 
 
 To have done with this strange tribe of 
 the Orchids, it remains for us to say a few 
 words on an auxiliary organ that sets the 
 whole mechanism going: I mean the nec- 
 tary, which, for that matter, has been the 
 object, on the part of the genius of the 
 species, of enquiries, attempts and experi- 
 ments as intelligent and as varied as those 
 
 32s
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 which are incessantly modifying the econ- 
 omy of the essential organs. 
 
 The nectary, as we have seen, is, in prin- 
 ciple, a sort of spur, of long, pointed horn 
 that opens right at the bottom of the 
 flower, beside the peduncle, and acts more 
 or less as a counterpoise to the corolla. It 
 contains a sugary liquid, the nectar, which 
 serves as food for butterflies, beetles and 
 other insects and which is turned into 
 honey by the bee. Its business, therefore, 
 is to attract the indispensable guests. It 
 is adapted to their size, their habits, their 
 tastes; it is always arranged in such a way 
 that they cannot introduce or withdraw 
 their proboscis without scrupulously and 
 successively performing all the rights pre- 
 scribed by the organic laws of the flower. 
 
 We already know enough of the fantastic 
 character and imagination of the Orchids 
 to foresee that here, as elsewhere — and 
 even more than elsewhere, for the more 
 
 326
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 supple organ lends itself to this more read- 
 ily — their inventive, practical, observant 
 and groping spirit has given itself free 
 scope. One of them, for instance, the Sar- 
 canthus teretifolius, probably failing in its 
 endeavour to elaborate a viscid fluid that 
 should harden quickly enough to stick the 
 bundle of pollen to the insect's head, has 
 overcome the difficulty by delaying the 
 visitor's proboscis as long as possible in the 
 narrow passages leading to the nectar. The 
 labyrinth which it has laid out is so com- 
 plicated that Bauer, Darwin's skilful 
 draughtsman, had to admit himself beaten 
 and gave up the attempt to reproduce it. 
 
 There are some which, starting on the 
 excellent principle that every simplification 
 is an improvement, have boldly suppressed 
 the nectar-horn. They have replaced it by 
 certain fleshy, fantastic and evidently suc- 
 culent excrescences which are nibbled by the 
 insects. Is it necessary to add that these 
 
 327
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 excrescences are always placed in such a 
 manner that the guest who feasts on them 
 must inevitably set all the pollen-machinery 
 in movement? 
 
 XXII 
 
 But, without lingering over a thousand 
 very various little artifices, let us end these 
 fairy stories by studying the enticements 
 of the Coryanthes macrantha. Truly, we 
 no longer know with exactly what sort of 
 being we here have to do. The astounding 
 Orchid has contrived this: its lower lip or 
 labellum forms a sort of bucket, into which 
 drops of almost pure water, secreted by two 
 horns situated overhead, fall continually; 
 when this bucket is half full, the water 
 flows away on one side by a spout or gutter. 
 All this hydraulic installation is very re- 
 markable in itself; but here is where the 
 alarming, I might almost say the diabolical 
 side of the combination begins. The liquid 
 
 328
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 which is secreted by the horns and which 
 accumulates in the satin basin is not nectar 
 and is in no way intended to attract the 
 insects: it has a much more delicate func- 
 tion in the really machiavellian plan of this 
 strange flower. The artless insects are in- 
 vited by the sugary perfumes diffused by 
 the fleshy excrescences of which I spoke 
 above to walk into the trap. These ex- 
 crescences are above the cup, in a sort of 
 chamber to which two lateral openings give 
 access. The big visiting bee — the flower, 
 being enormous, allures hardly any but the 
 heaviest Hymenoptera, as though the 
 others experienced a certain shame at enter- 
 ing such vast and sumptuous halls — the big 
 bee begins to nibble the savoury caruncles. 
 If she were alone, she would go away 
 quietly, after finishing her meal, without 
 even grazing the bucket of water, the 
 stigma and the pollen; and none of that 
 which is required would take place. But 
 
 329
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 the sapient Orchid observes the life that 
 moves around it. It knows that the bees 
 form an innumerable, greedy and busy 
 people, that they come out by thousands in 
 the sunny hours, that a perfume has but to 
 quiver like a kiss on the threshold of an 
 opening flower for them to hasten in a 
 crowd to the banquet prepared under the 
 nuptial tent. We therefore have two or 
 three looters in the sugary chamber: the 
 space is scanty, the walls slippery, the 
 guests ill-mannered. They crowd and 
 hustle one another to such good purpose 
 that one of them always ends by falling 
 into the bucket that awaits her beneath the 
 treacherous repast. She there finds an un- 
 expected bath, conscientiously wets her 
 bright, diaphanous wings and, despite im- 
 mense efforts, cannot succeed in resuming 
 her flight. This is where the astute flower 
 lies in wait for her. There is but one open- 
 ing through which she can leave the magic 
 
 330
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 bucket: the spout that acts as a waste-pipe 
 for the overflow of the reservoir. It is 
 just wide enough to allow of the passage 
 of the insect, whose back touches first the 
 sticky surface of the stigma and then the 
 viscid glands of the pollen-masses that 
 await her along the vault. She thus escapes, 
 laden with the adhesive dust, and enters a 
 neighbouring flower, where the tragedy of 
 the banquet, the hustling, the fall, the bath 
 and the escape is reenacted and perforce 
 brings the imported pollen into contact with 
 the greedy stigma. 
 
 Here, then, we have a flower that knows 
 and plays upon the passions of insects. Nor 
 can it be pretended that all these are only 
 so many more or less romantic interpreta- 
 tions : no, the facts have been precisely and 
 scientifically observed and it is impossible 
 to explain the use and arrangement of the 
 flower's different organs in any other way. 
 We must accept the evidence as it stands. 
 
 331
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 This incredible and efficacious artifice is the 
 more surprising inasmuch as it does not 
 here tend to satisfy the immediate and 
 urgent need to eat that sharpens the dullest 
 wits; it has only a distant ideal in view: the 
 propagation of the species. 
 
 But why, we shall be asked, these fan- 
 tastic complications which end only by in- 
 creasing the dangers of chance? Let us 
 not hasten to give judgment and reply. 
 We know nothing of the reasons of the 
 plant. Do we know what obstacles the 
 flower encounters in the direction of logic 
 and simplicity? Do we know thoroughly a 
 single one of the organic laws of its ex- 
 istence and its growth? One watching us 
 from the height of Mars or Venus, as we 
 exert ourselves to achieve the conquest of 
 the air, might, in his turn, ask: 
 
 "Why those shapeless and monstrous 
 machines, those balloons, those air-ships, 
 those parachutes, when it were so easy to 
 
 332
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 copy the birds and to supply the arms with 
 a pair of all-sufficing wings?" 
 
 XXIII 
 
 To these proofs of intelligence, man's 
 somewhat puerile vanity opposes the tra- 
 ditional objection: yes, they create marvels, 
 but those marvels remain eternally the 
 same. Each species, each variety has its 
 system and, from generation to generation, 
 introduces no perceptible improvement. It 
 is true that, since we have been observing 
 them — that is to say, during the past fifty 
 years — we have not seen the Coryanthes 
 macrantha or the Catasetidte perfect their 
 trap: this is all that we can say; and it is 
 really not enough. Have we as much as 
 attempted the most elementary experi- 
 ments ; and do we know what the successive 
 generations of our astonishing bathing 
 Orchid might do in a century's time, if 
 placed in different surroundings, among 
 
 333
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 insects to which it was not accustomed? 
 Besides, the names which we give to the 
 orders, species and varieties end by deceiv- 
 ing ourselves; and we thus create imaginary 
 types which we believe to be fixed, whereas 
 they are probably only the representatives 
 of one and the same flower, which continues 
 to modify its organs slowly in accordance 
 with slow circumstances. 
 
 The flowers came upon our earth before 
 the insects; they had, therefore, when the 
 latter appeared, to adapt an entirely new 
 system of machinery to the habits of these 
 unexpected collaborators. This geologi- 
 cally-incontestable fact alone, amid all that 
 which we do not know, is enough to estab- 
 lish evolution; and does not this some- 
 what vague word mean, after all, adapta- 
 tion, modification, intelligent progress? 
 
 It would be easy, moreover, without ap- 
 pealing to this prehistoric event, to bring 
 together a large number of facts which 
 
 334
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 would show that the faculty of adaptation 
 and intelligent progress is not reserved ex- 
 clusively for the human race. Without 
 returning to the detailed chapters which I 
 have devoted to this subject in The Life of 
 the Bee, I will simply recall two or three 
 topical details which are there mentioned. 
 The bees, for instance, invented the hive. 
 In the wild and primitive state and in 
 their country of origin, they work in the 
 open air. It was the uncertainty, the in- 
 clemency of our northern seasons that gave 
 them the idea of seeking a shelter in hollow 
 trees or a hole in the rocks. This ingenious 
 idea restored to the work of looting and to 
 the care of the eggs the thousands of bees 
 stationed around the combs to maintain the 
 necessary heat. It is not uncommon, es- 
 pecially in the South, during exceptionally 
 mild summers, to find them reverting to the 
 tropical manners of their ancestors. 1 
 
 1 I had just written these lines, when M. E. L. 
 Bouvier made a communication in the Academy of 
 
 335
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 Another fact : when transported to Aus- 
 tralia or California, our black bee com- 
 pletely alters her habits. After one or two 
 years, finding that summer is perpetual and 
 flowers for ever abundant, she will live 
 from day to day, content to gather the 
 honey and pollen indispensable for the 
 day's consumption; and, her recent and 
 thoughtful observation triumphing over 
 
 Science (<-_/". the report of the 7th of May, 1906) on 
 the subject of two nidifications in the open air observed 
 in Paris, one in a Sofhora Japonica, the other in a 
 chestnut-tree. The latter, which hung from a small 
 branch furnished with two almost contiguous forks, 
 was the more remarkable of the two, because of its 
 evident and intelligent adaptation to particularly diffi- 
 cult circumstances. 
 
 "The bees," says M. de Parville, in his summary 
 in the science-column of the Journal des Debuts of 
 the 31st of May, 1906, "built consolidating pillars 
 and resorted to really remarkable artifices of protection 
 and ended by transforming the two forks of the chest- 
 nut-tree into a solid ceiling. An ingenious human 
 being would certainly not have done so well. 
 
 "To protect themselves against the rain, they had 
 installed fences, thickenings and blinds against the sun. 
 One can have no idea of the perfection of the industry 
 of the bees, except by observing the architecture of the 
 two nidifications, now at the Museum." 
 
 336
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 hereditary experience, she will cease to 
 make provision for her winter. Biichner 
 mentions an analogous fact, which also 
 proves the bees' adaptation to circum- 
 stances, not slow, secular, unconscious and 
 fatal, but immediate and intelligent: in Bar- 
 bados, the bees whose hives are in the midst 
 of the refineries, where they find sugar in 
 plenty during the whole year, will entirely 
 abandon their visits to the flowers. 
 
 Let us us lastly recall the amusing contra- 
 diction which the bees gave to two learned 
 English entomologists, Kirkby and Spence: 
 
 "Show us," said these, "a single case in 
 which, under stress of circumstances, the 
 bees have had the idea of substituting clay 
 or mortar for wax and propolis and we will 
 admit their reasoning faculties." 
 
 Hardly had they expressed this somewhat 
 arbitrary wish, when another naturalist, 
 Andrew Knight, having coated the bark of 
 certain trees with a sort of cement made of 
 
 337
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 wax and turpentine, observed that his bees 
 entirely ceased to gather propolis and em- 
 ployed only this new and unknown sub- 
 stance, which they found prepared in abun- 
 dance in the neighbourhood of their home. 
 Moreover, in the practice of apiculture, 
 when pollen is scarce, the bee-keeper has 
 but to place a few handfuls of flour at their 
 disposal for them at once to understand 
 that this can serve the same purpose and be 
 turned to the same use as the dust of the 
 anthers, although its taste, smell and colour 
 are absolutely different. 
 
 What I have just said, in the matter of 
 the bees, might, I think, mutatis mutandis, 
 be confirmed in the kingdom of the flowers, 
 I have referred above to my humble experi- 
 ments in the wonderful evolutionary efforts 
 of the numerous varieties of the Sage. 
 And a curious study by Babinet on the 
 cereals tells us that certain plants, when 
 transported far from their habitual cli- 
 
 338
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 mate, observe the new circumstances and 
 avail themselves of them, exactly as the 
 bees do. Thus, in the hottest regions of 
 Asia, Africa and America, where the 
 winter does not kill it annually, our corn 
 becomes again what it must have been at 
 first, a perennial plant, like grass. It re- 
 mains always green, multiplies by the root 
 and no longer bears ears or grains. When, 
 therefore, from its original and tropical 
 country, it came to be acclimatised in our 
 icy regions, it must have had to upset its 
 habits and invent a new method of multi- 
 plication. As Babinet well says: 
 
 "The organism of the plant, thanks to 
 an inconceivable miracle, seemed to foresee 
 the need of passing through the grain state, 
 lest it should perish completely during the 
 severe season." 
 
 339
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 XXIV 
 
 In any case, to destroy the objection which 
 we mentioned above and which has caused 
 us to travel so far from our immediate 
 subject, it would be enough to establish one 
 act of intelligent progress, were it but for 
 a single occasion, outside mankind. But, 
 apart from the pleasure which one takes 
 in refuting an over-vain and out-of-date 
 argument, how little importance, when all 
 is said, attaches to this question of the per- 
 sonal intelligence of the flowers, the insects 
 or the birds ! Suppose that we say, speak- 
 ing of the Orchid and the bee alike, that it 
 is nature and not the plant or the insect that 
 calculates, that combines, that adorns, in- 
 vents and thinks: what interest can this dis- 
 tinction have for us? A much loftier ques- 
 tion and one much worthier of our eager 
 attention towers over these details. What 
 we have to do is to grasp the character, the 
 
 340
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 quality, the habits and perhaps the object 
 of the general intelligence whence emanate 
 all the intelligent acts performed upon this 
 earth. It is from this point of view that 
 the study of those creatures — the ants and 
 the bees, among others — in which, outside 
 the human form, the proceedings and the 
 ideal of that genius are most clearly mani- 
 fested becomes one of the most curious that 
 we can undertake. It is clear, after all that 
 we have shown, that those tendencies, those 
 intellectual methods must be at least as 
 complex, as advanced, as startling in the 
 Orchids as in the gregarious Hymenoptera. 
 Let us add that a large number of the 
 motives and a portion of the logic of these 
 restless insects, so difficult of observation, 
 still escape us, whereas we can grasp with 
 ease all the silent motives, all the wise and 
 stable arguments of the peaceful flower. 
 
 341
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 XXV 
 
 Now what do we observe, when we per- 
 ceive nature (or the general intelligence or 
 the universal genius : the name matters but 
 little) at work in the Orchid world ? Many 
 things; and, to mention it only in passing, 
 for the subject would offer facilities for a 
 long study, we begin by ascertaining that 
 her idea of beauty, of gladness, her meth- 
 ods of attraction, her aesthetic tastes are 
 very near akin to our own. But no doubt 
 it would be more correct to state that ours 
 are congenial with hers. It is, in fact, very 
 uncertain whether we have ever invented a 
 beauty peculiar to ourselves. All our archi- 
 tectural, all our musical motives, all our 
 harmonies of colour and light are borrowed 
 directly from nature. Without calling upon 
 the sea, the mountains, the skies, the night, 
 the twilight, what might one not say, for in- 
 stance, of the beauty of the trees? I speak 
 
 342
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 not only of the tree considered in the forest, 
 where it is one of the powers of the earth, 
 perhaps the chief source of our instincts, of 
 our sense of the universe, but of the tree in 
 itself, the solitary tree, whose green old age 
 is laden with a thousand seasons. Among 
 those impressions which, without our know- 
 ing it, form the limpid hollow and perhaps 
 the subsoil of happiness and calm of our 
 whole existence, which of us does not pre- 
 sence the recollection of a few fine trees? 
 When a man has passed mid-life, when he 
 has come to the end of the wondering 
 period, when he has exhausted nigh all the 
 sights that the art, the genius and the lux- 
 ury of ages and men can offer, after experi- 
 encing and comparing many things he 
 returns to very simple memories. They 
 raise upon the purified horizon two or three 
 innocent, invariable and refreshing images, 
 which he would wish to carry away with 
 him in his last sleep, if it be true that an 
 
 343
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 image can pass the threshold that separates 
 our two worlds. For myself, I can imagine 
 no paradise nor after-life, however splen- 
 did it may be, in which a certain magnifi- 
 cent Oak would be out of place, or a certain 
 Cypress, or a Parasol Pine of Florence or 
 of a charming hermitage near my own 
 house, any one of which affords to the 
 passer-by a model of all the great move- 
 ments of necessary resistance, of peaceful 
 courage, of soaring, of gravity, of silent 
 victory and of perseverance. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 But I am wandering too far afield : I in- 
 tended only to remark, with reference to 
 the flower, that nature, when she wishes to 
 be beautiful, to please, to delight and to 
 prove herself happy, does almost what we 
 should do had we her treasures at our dis- 
 posal. I know that, speaking thus, I am 
 speaking a little like the bishop who was 
 
 344
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 astonished that Providence always made 
 the great streams flow close to the big 
 cities; but it is difficult to look upon these 
 things from any other than a human point 
 of view. Let us, then, from this point of 
 view, consider that we should know very 
 few signs or expressions of happiness if we 
 did not know the flower. In order well 
 to judge of its power of gladness and 
 beauty, one must live in a part of the 
 country where it reigns undivided, such as 
 the corner of Provence, between the Siagne 
 and the Loup, in which I am writing these 
 lines. Here, truly, the flower is the sole 
 sovereign of the hills and valleys. The 
 peasants have lost the habit of cultivating 
 corn, as though they had now only to pro- 
 vide for the needs of a subtle race of 
 mankind that lived on sweet fragrance and 
 ambrosia. The fields form one great nose- 
 gay, which is incessantly renewed, and the 
 perfumes that succeed one another seem to 
 
 345
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 dance their rounds all through the azure 
 year. Anemones, Gilliflowers, Mimosas, 
 Violets, Pinks, Narcissuses, Hyacinths, Jon- 
 quils, Mignonette, Jasmine invade the days, 
 the nights, the winter, summer, spring and 
 autumn months. But the magnificent hour 
 belongs to the Roses of May. Then, as 
 far as the eye can see, from the slope of 
 the hills to the hollow of the plains, be- 
 tween dikes of Vines and Olive-trees, they 
 flow on every side like a stream of petals 
 whence emerge the houses and the trees, a 
 stream of the colour which we assign to 
 youth, health and joy. The aroma, at once 
 warm and refreshing, but above all 
 spacious, that opens up the sky emanates, 
 one would think, directly from the sources 
 of beatitude. The roads, the paths are 
 carved in the pulp of the flower, in the very 
 substance of Eden. For the first time in 
 one's life, one seems to have a satisfying 
 vision of happiness. 
 
 346
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Still from our human point of view and 
 persevering in the necessary illusion, let us 
 add to our first remark one a little more 
 extensive, a little less hazardous and per- 
 haps big with consequences, namely, that 
 the genius of the earth, which is probably 
 that of the whole world, acts, in the vital 
 struggle, exactly as a man would act. It 
 employs the same methods, the same logic. 
 It attains its aim by the same means that 
 we would use : it gropes, it hesitates, it cor- 
 rects itself time after time; it adds, it sup- 
 presses, it recognises and repairs its errors, 
 as we should do in its place. It makes 
 great efforts, it invents with difficulty and 
 little by little, after the manner of the 
 workmen and engineers in our workshops. 
 It fights like ourselves against the heavy, 
 huge and obscure mass of its being. It 
 knows no more than we do whither it is 
 
 347
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 going; it seeks and finds itself gradually. 
 It has an ideal that is often confused, but 
 one in which, nevertheless, we distinguish 
 a host of great lines that rise towards a 
 more ardent, complex, nervous and spirit- 
 ual form of existence. Materially, it dis- 
 poses of infinite resources, it knows the 
 secret of prodigious forces of which we 
 know nothing; but, intellectually, it appears 
 strictly to occupy our sphere: we cannot 
 prove that, hitherto, it has exceeded its lim- 
 its; and, if it does not endeavour to take 
 anything from beyond that sphere, does 
 this not mean that there is nothing beyond 
 it? Does it not mean that the methods of 
 the human mind are the only possible meth- 
 ods, that man has not erred, that he is 
 neither an exception nor a monster, but the 
 being through whom pass, in whom are 
 most intensely manifested the great voli- 
 tions, the great desires of the universe? 
 
 348
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 The touchstones of our consciousness 
 emerge slowly, grudgingly. Perhaps 
 Plato's famous figure is no longer sufficient : 
 I mean the cave with the wall above it 
 whence the shadows of unknown men and 
 objects are thrown into the cave below; 
 but, if we tried to substitute a new and 
 more exact image in its place, this would be 
 hardly more consoling. Suppose Plato's 
 cave enlarged. No ray of brightness ever 
 enters it. With the exception of light and 
 fire, it has been carefully supplied with all 
 that our civilisation permits; and men have 
 been imprisoned in it from their birth. 
 They would not regret the light, having 
 never seen it; they would not be blind, 
 their eyes would not be dead, but, having 
 nothing to look at, would probably be- 
 come the most sensitive organ of touch. 
 
 In order to recognise ourselves in their 
 
 349
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 actions, let us picture these wretches in their 
 darkness, in the midst of the multitude 
 of unknown objects that surround them. 
 What quaint mistakes, what incredible de- 
 viations, what astounding misinterpreta- 
 tions must needs occur ! But how touching 
 and often how ingenious would seem the 
 use which they would make of things that 
 had not been created for employment in the 
 dark ! How often would they guess aright ? 
 And how great would not be their stupe- 
 faction if, suddenly, by the light of day, 
 they discovered the nature and the real ob- 
 ject of utensils and furniture which they had 
 accommodated as best they could to the 
 uncertainties of the shade? 
 
 And yet their position seems simple and 
 easy compared with our own. The mystery 
 in which they crawl is limited. They are 
 deprived of only one sense, whereas it is 
 impossible to estimate the number of those 
 in which we are lacking. The cause of their 
 
 350
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 mistakes is one alone, whereas those of ours 
 are countless. 
 
 Since we live in a cave of this sort, is it 
 not interesting to prove that the power 
 which has placed us there acts often and on 
 some important points even as we act our- 
 selves? Here we have a glimpse of light 
 in our subterranean cave to show us that 
 we have not been mistaken as to the use of 
 every object to be found therein. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 We have long taken a rather foolish pride 
 in thinking ourselves miraculous, unparall- 
 eled and marvellously incidental beings, 
 probably fallen from another world, devoid 
 of any certain ties with the rest of life and, 
 in any case, endowed with an unusual, in- 
 comparable, monstrous faculty. It is greatly 
 preferable to be less prodigious, for we 
 have learnt that prodigies do not take long 
 
 35i
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 to disappear in the normal evolution of 
 nature. It is much more consoling to ob- 
 serve that we follow the same road as the 
 soul of this great world, that we have the 
 same ideas, the same hopes, the same trials 
 and — were it not for our specific dream 
 of justice and pity — the same feelings. It 
 is much more tranquilising to assure our- 
 selves that, to better our lot, to utilise the 
 forces, the occasions, the laws of matter, 
 we employ methods exactly similar to those 
 which it uses to conquer, enlighten and 
 order its unsubjected, unconscious and 
 unruly regions, that there are no other 
 methods, that we are in the midst of truth 
 and that we are in our right place and at 
 home in this universe formed of unknown 
 substances, whose thought, however, is not 
 impenetrable and hostile, but analogous 
 and apposite to our own. 
 
 If nature knew everything, if she were 
 never mistaken, if, everywhere, in all her 
 
 352
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 undertakings, she showed herself, at the 
 first onset, perfect, impeccable, infallible, 
 if she revealed in all things an intelligence 
 immeasurably superior to our own, then 
 there would be cause to fear and to lose 
 courage. We should feel ourselves the vic- 
 tims and the prey of an extraneous power, 
 which we should have no hope of knowing 
 or measuring. It is much better to be con- 
 vinced that this power, at least from the 
 intellectual point of view, is closely akin to 
 our own. Our intelligence draws upon the 
 same reserve as does that of nature. We 
 belong to the same world, we arc almost 
 equals. We are associating not with in- 
 accessible gods, but with veiled, yet fra- 
 ternal volitions which it is our business to 
 surprise and to direct. 
 
 XXX 
 
 It would not, I imagine, be very bold to 
 maintain that there are not any more or less 
 
 353
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 intelligent beings, but a scattered, general 
 intelligence, a sort of universal fluid that 
 penetrates diversely the organisms which it 
 encounters according as they are good or 
 bad conductors of the understanding. Man 
 would then represent, until now, upon this 
 earth, the mode of life that offered the least 
 resistance to this fluid, which the religions 
 called divine. Our nerves would be the 
 threads along which this more subtle elec- 
 tricity would spread. The circumvolutions 
 of our brain would, in a manner, form the 
 induction-coil in which the force of the 
 current would be multiplied; but this cur- 
 rent would be of no other nature, would 
 proceed from no other source than that 
 which passes through the stone, the star, 
 the flower or the animal. 
 
 But these are mysteries which it were 
 somewhat idle to question, seeing that we 
 do not yet possess the organ that could 
 gather their reply. Let us be satisfied with 
 
 354
 
 The Intelligence of the Flowers 
 
 having observed certain manifestations of 
 this intelligence outside ourselves. All that 
 we observe within ourselves is rightly open 
 to suspicion : we are at once judge and 
 suitor and we have too great an interest in 
 peopling our world with magnificent illu- 
 sions and hopes. But let the slightest ex- 
 ternal indication be dear and precious to 
 us. Those which the flowers have just 
 offered us are probably quite infinitesimal 
 compared with what the mountains, the sea 
 and the stars would tell us, could we sur- 
 prise the secrets of their life. Nevertheless, 
 they allow us to presume with greater confi- 
 dence that the spirit which animates all 
 things or emanates from them is of the 
 same essence as that which animates our 
 bodies. If this spirit resembles us, if we 
 thus resemble it, if all that it contains is 
 contained also within ourselves, if it em- 
 ploys our methods, if it has our habits, our 
 preoccupations, our tendencies, our desires 
 
 355
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 for better things, is it illogical for us to 
 hope all that we do hope, instinctively, in- 
 vincibly, seeing that it is almost certain that 
 it hopes the same? Is it probable, when we 
 find scattered through life so great a sum 
 total of intelligence, that this life should 
 make no work of intelligence, that is to say, 
 should not pursue an aim of happiness, of 
 perfection, of victory over that which we 
 call evil, death, darkness, annihilation, but 
 which is probably only the shadow of its 
 face or its own sleep ? 
 
 356
 
 PERFUMES
 
 PERFUMES 
 
 AFTER speaking at some length of the 
 intelligence of the flowers, it will seem 
 natural that we should say a word of their 
 soul, which is their perfume. Unfortu- 
 nately, here, as in the case of the soul of 
 man, a perfume of another sphere, where 
 reason bathes, we have at once to do with 
 the unknowable. We are almost entirely 
 unacquainted with the purpose of that zone 
 of festive and invisibly magnificent airwhich 
 the corollas shed around themselves. There 
 is, in fact, a great doubt whether it serves 
 chiefly to attract the insects. In the first 
 place, many among the most sweet-scented 
 of the flowers do not admit of cross-fertil- 
 isation, so that the visit of the butterfly or 
 
 359
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 the bee is to them a matter of indifference 
 or inconvenience. Next, that which at- 
 tracts the insects is solely the pollen and the 
 nectar, which, generally, have no percep- 
 tible odour. And thus we see them neglect 
 the most deliciously perfumed flowers, such 
 as the rose and the carnation, to besiege in 
 crowds the flowers of the maple or the 
 hazel-tree, whose aroma is, in a manner of 
 speaking, null. 
 
 Let us, then, confess that we do not yet 
 know in what respect perfumes are useful to 
 the flower, even as we cannot tell why we 
 ourselves perceive them. Indeed, of all our 
 senses, that of smell is the most unexplained. 
 It is evident that sight, hearing, touch and 
 taste are indispensable to our animal exist- 
 ence. A long education alone teaches us 
 the disinterested enjoyment of forms, col- 
 ours and sounds. For that matter, our 
 sense of smell also exercises important 
 servile functions. It is the keeper of the 
 
 360
 
 Perfumes 
 
 air we breathe, the hygienist or chemist that 
 watches carefully over the quality of the 
 food offered for our consumption, any dis- 
 agreeable emanation revealing the presence 
 of suspicious or dangerous germs. But be- 
 sides this practical mission it has an- 
 other which corresponds with nothing at 
 all. Perfumes are utterly useless to the 
 needs of our physical life. When too vio- 
 lent or too lasting, they may even become 
 detrimental to it. Nevertheless, we possess 
 a faculty that revels in them and brings us 
 the joyful tidings of them with as much en- 
 thusiasm and conviction as though it con- 
 cerned the discovery of a delicious fruit or 
 drink. This uselessness deserves our con- 
 sideration. It must hide some fair secret. 
 We have here the only occurrence in which 
 nature procures us a gratuitous pleasure, a 
 satisfaction that does not serve to adorn one 
 of necessity's snares. Our scent is the only 
 purely luxurious sense that she has granted 
 
 361
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 us. Wherefore it seems almost foreign to 
 our bodies, appears to be not very closely 
 connected with our organism. Is it an ap- 
 paratus that is developing, or one that is 
 wasting away; a somnolent, or an awaken- 
 ing faculty ? Everything leads us to think 
 that it is being evolved on even lines with' 
 our civilisation. The ancients interested 
 themselves almost exclusively in the more 
 brutal, the heavier, the more solid scents, so 
 to speak: musk, benzoin, incense; and the 
 fragrance of the flowers is very seldom 
 mentioned in Greek and Latin poetry or in 
 Hebrew literature. To-day, do we ever see 
 our peasants, even at their longest periods 
 of leisure, dream of smelling a violet or a 
 rose? And is not this, on the other hand, 
 the very first act of an inhabitant of our 
 great cities who perceives a flower? There 
 is, therefore, some ground for admitting 
 that the sense of smell is the last-born of 
 our senses, the only one, perhaps, that is 
 
 362
 
 Perfumes 
 
 not "in course of retrogression," to use the 
 ponderous phrase of the biologists. This 
 is a reason for making it our study, ques- 
 tioning it and cultivating its possibilities. 
 Who shall tell the surprises which it would 
 have in store for us if it equalled, for 
 instance, the perfection of our sight, as it 
 does in the case of the dog, which lives as 
 much by the nose as by the eyes? 
 
 We have here an unexplored world. 
 This mysterious sense, which, at first sight, 
 appears almost foreign to our organism, 
 becomes, perhaps, when more carefully 
 considered, that which enters into it most 
 intimately. Are we not, above all things, 
 beings of the air? Is the air not for us the 
 most absolutely and promptly indispensable 
 element; and is not our smell just the one 
 sense that perceives some parts of it? Per- 
 fumes, which are the jewels of that life- 
 giving air, do not adorn it without good 
 cause. It were not surprising if this luxury 
 
 363
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 which we do not understand corresponded 
 with something very profound and very 
 essential and rather, as we have seen, with 
 something that is not yet than with some- 
 thing that has ceased to be. It is very 
 possible that this sense, the only one that is 
 turned towards the future, is already 
 discerning the most striking manifestations 
 of a form or of a happy and salutary state 
 of matter that is reserving many surprises 
 for us. 
 
 Meanwhile, it has not yet reached beyond 
 the stage of the more violent, the less subtle 
 perceptions. Hardly does it so much as 
 suspect, with the aid of the imagination, 
 the profound and harmonious effluvia that 
 evidently envelop the great spectacles of the 
 atmosphere and the light. As we are on 
 the point of distinguishing those of the rain 
 and the twilight, why should we not one day 
 succeed in recognising and fixing the scent 
 of snow, of ice, of morning dew, of the first 
 
 364
 
 Perfumes 
 
 fruits of the dawn, of the twinkling of the 
 stars ; for everything must have its perfume, 
 inconceivable, as yet, in space: even a 
 moonbeam, a ripple of water, a hovering 
 cloud, an azure smile of the sky. . . . 
 
 II 
 
 Chance or rather the choice of life has 
 brought me back lately to the spot where 
 almost all the perfumes of Europe are born 
 and elaborated. It is, in point of fact, as 
 every one knows, in the sun-swept and 
 balmy region stretching from Cannes to 
 Nice that the last hills and the last valleys 
 of living and true flowers maintain an 
 heroic struggle against the coarse chemical 
 odours of Germany, which stand in exactly 
 the same relation to nature's perfumes as 
 do the painted woods and plains of a theatre 
 to the woods and plains of the real country. 
 Here the labourer's work is ruled by a 
 
 365
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 sort of purely floral calendar, in which, in 
 May and July, two adorable queens hold 
 sway: the rose and the jasmine. Around 
 these two sovereigns of the year, one the 
 colour of the dawn, the other clad in white 
 stars, defile in procession, from January to 
 December, the violets, innumerous and 
 prompt, the artless, marvel-eyed narcissuses, 
 the clustering mimosas, the mignonette, the 
 pink laden with precious spices, the im- 
 perious geranium, the tyrannically virginal 
 orange-flower, the lavender, the Spanish 
 broom, the too-potent tuberose and the 
 acacia that resembles an orange caterpillar. 
 It is, at first, not a little disconcerting to 
 see the great dull and heavy rustics, whom 
 harsh necessity turns every elsewhere from 
 the smiles of life, taking flowers so seri- 
 ously, handling carefully those fragile orna- 
 ments of the earth, performing a task fit 
 for a princess or a bee and bending under 
 a weight of violets or jonquils. But the 
 
 366
 
 Perfumes 
 
 most striking impression is that of certain 
 evenings or mornings in the season of the 
 roses or the jasmine. It is as though the 
 atmosphere of the earth had suddenly 
 changed, as though it had made way for 
 that of an infinitely happy planet, where 
 perfumes are not, as here, fleeting, Vague 
 and precarious, but stable, spacious, full, 
 permanent, generous, normal and inalien- 
 able. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Many writers, speaking of Grasse, have 
 drawn the picture of that almost fairy-like 
 industry which occupies the whole of a 
 hard-working town, perched, like a sunlit 
 hive, upon a mountain-side. They have 
 told of the magnificent cartloads of roses 
 shot upon the threshold of tlfe smoking fac- 
 tories, the great halls in which the sorters 
 literally wade through the flood of petals, 
 the less cumbersome, but more precious 
 
 367
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 arrival of the violets, tuberoses, acacias, jas- 
 mine, in wide baskets which the peasant- 
 women carry nobly on their heads. Lastly, 
 they have described the different processes 
 whereby the flowers, each according to its 
 character, are forced to yield to the crystal 
 the marvellous secrets of their hearts. We 
 know that some of them, the roses, for in- 
 stance, are accommodating and willing and 
 give up their aroma with simplicity. They 
 are heaped into huge boilers, tall as those 
 of our locomotive engines, through which 
 steam is made to pass. Little by little, their 
 essential oil, more costly than a jelly of 
 pearls, oozes drop by drop into a glass tube, 
 no wider than a goose-quill at the bottom 
 of the monstrous still, which resembles 
 some mountain painfully giving birth to a 
 tear of amber. 
 
 But the greater part of the flowers do not 
 so easily allow their souls to be imprisoned. 
 l will not, in the wake of so many others, 
 
 368
 
 Perfumes 
 
 speak here of the infinitely varied tortures 
 inflicted upon them to force them at length 
 to surrender the treasure which they despe- 
 rately hide in the depth of their corollas. 
 I will not enumerate the different processes 
 of chemical extraction by means of petrol 
 ether, sulphide of carbon and the rest. The 
 great perfumers of Grasse, ever faithful 
 to tradition, scorn these artificial and almost 
 unfair methods, which wound the soul of 
 the flower. It will suffice to give an idea 
 of the executioner's cunning and the ob- 
 stinacy of some of the victims, to recall the 
 pangs of the enfleurage which certain flow- 
 ers are made to endure before they break 
 silence. The cold enfleurage is practised 
 only upon the jonquil, the mignonette, the 
 tuberose and the jasmine; 1 and I may men- 
 
 1 The violets resist the reduction of cold fat and the 
 torture of fire has to be superadded. The lard, there- 
 fore, is heated in the water-bath until it approaches 
 boiling-point. In consequence of this barbarous treat- 
 ment, which recalls that inflicted upon the coiners of 
 
 369
 
 The Measure of the Hours 
 
 tion, in passing, that the scent of the jas- 
 mine is the only one that is inimitable, the 
 only one that cannot be obtained by a 
 cunning mixture of other odours. The 
 torturer coats large plates of- glass with 
 a white fat of the thickness of two fingers 
 and spreads on this bed of humiliating pain 
 the flowers to be questioned. As the re- 
 sult of what hypocritical manoeuvres, of 
 what unctuous promises does the fat obtain 
 their irrevocable confidences? None can 
 tell ; but the fact remains that soon the too- 
 trusting flowers have nothing more to lose. 
 Forthwith, they are removed and flung 
 away as rubbish; and, each morning, a new 
 ingenuous heap takes their place on the in- 
 sidious couch. These yield in their turn 
 
 the middle ages, the modest and fragrant flowers that 
 deck the roads in spring gradually lose the strength 
 to keep their secret. They yield, they surrender, and 
 their liquid executioner is not satiated until it has 
 absorbed four times its own weight in petals, which 
 causes the torture to be prolonged throughout the 
 season in which the violets blossom under the olive-trees. 
 
 370
 
 Perfumes 
 
 and undergo the same fate; others and yet 
 others follow them; and it is not until the 
 end of three months, that is after devouring 
 ninety successive layers of flowers, that the 
 unctuous ogre is completely surfeited and 
 refuses to absorb the life and soul of any 
 further victims. It now becomes a matter 
 of making the wan miser disgorge; for the 
 energy, to retain the absorbed treasure. 
 This is achieved, not without difficulty. 
 The fat has base passions which are its un- 
 doing. It is plied with alcohol, is intoxi- 
 cated and ends by quitting its hold. The 
 alcohol now possesses the mystery. No 
 sooner has it the secrets in its custody than 
 it too claims the right to impart them to 
 none other, to keep them for itself alone. It 
 is attacked in its turn, tortured, evaporated, 
 condensed; and, after all these adventures, 
 the liquid pearl, pure, essential, inexhaust- 
 ible and almost imperishable, is at last gath- 
 ered on a crystal blade. 
 
 371
 
 S659S 1-25 5M 
 
 Date 
 
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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 291 209 5