The Best Works of Balzac - Оноре де Бальзак

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be ruined. Though I have nothing, at least at the moment, I owe

       nothing. The man who gives his life to the achievement of great

       things in the sphere of intellect, needs very little; still,

       though twenty sous a day would be enough, I do not possess that

       small income for my laborious idleness. When I wish to cogitate,

       want drives me out of the sanctuary where my mind has its being.

       What is to become of me?

       "I am not frightened at poverty. If it were not that beggars are

       imprisoned, branded, scorned, I would beg, to enable me to solve

       at my leisure the problems that haunt me. Still, this sublime

       resignation, by which I might emancipate my mind, through

       abstracting it from the body, would not serve my end. I should

       still need money to devote myself to certain experiments. But for

       that, I would accept the outward indigence of a sage possessed of

       both heaven and heart. A man need only never stoop, to remain

       lofty in poverty. He who struggles and endures, while marching on

       to a glorious end, presents a noble spectacle; but who can have

       the strength to fight here? We can climb cliffs, but it is

       unendurable to remain for ever tramping the mud. Everything here

       checks the flight of the spirit that strives towards the future.

       "I should not be afraid of myself in a desert cave; I am afraid of

       myself here. In the desert I should be alone with myself,

       undisturbed; here man has a thousand wants which drag him down.

       You go out walking, absorbed in dreams; the voice of the beggar

       asking an alms brings you back to this world of hunger and thirst.

       You need money only to take a walk. Your organs of sense,

       perpetually wearied by trifles, never get any rest. The poet's

       sensitive nerves are perpetually shocked, and what ought to be his

       glory becomes his torment; his imagination is his cruelest enemy.

       The injured workman, the poor mother in childbed, the prostitute

       who has fallen ill, the foundling, the infirm and aged—even vice

       and crime here find a refuge and charity; but the world is

       merciless to the inventor, to the man who thinks. Here everything

       must show an immediate and practical result. Fruitless attempts

       are mocked at, though they may lead to the greatest discoveries;

       the deep and untiring study that demands long concentrations of

       every faculty is not valued here. The State might pay talent as it

       pays the bayonet; but it is afraid of being taken in by mere

       cleverness, as if genius could be counterfeited for any length of

       time.

       "Ah, my dear uncle, when monastic solitude was destroyed, uprooted

       from its home at the foot of mountains, under green and silent

       shade, asylums ought to have been provided for those suffering

       souls who, by an idea, promote the progress of nations or prepare

       some new and fruitful development of science.

      "September 20th.

      "The love of study brought me hither, as you know. I have met

       really learned men, amazing for the most part; but the lack of

       unity in scientific work almost nullifies their efforts. There is

       no Head of instruction or of scientific research. At the Museum a

       professor argues to prove that another in the Rue Saint-Jacques

       talks nonsense. The lecturer at the College of Medicine abuses him

       of the College de France. When I first arrived, I went to hear an

       old Academician who taught five hundred youths that Corneille was

       a haughty and powerful genius; Racine, elegiac and graceful;

       Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire, supremely witty; Bossuet and

       Pascal, incomparable in argument. A professor of philosophy may

       make a name by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another

       discourses on the history of words, without troubling himself

       about ideas. One explains Aeschylus, another tells you that

       communes were communes, and neither more nor less. These original

       and brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours,

       constitute the higher education which is to lead to giant strides

       in human knowledge.

       "If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect it of

       being afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, might

       bring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. Then nations

       would go too far and too fast; so professors are appointed to

       produce simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoid of

       method or any notion of the future?

       "The Institut might be the central government of the moral and intellectual world; but it has been ruined lately by its subdivision into separate academies. So human science marches on, without a guide, without a system, and floats haphazard with no road traced out. "This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well as in science. In the order of nature means are simple, the end is grand and marvelous; here in science as in government, the means are stupendous, the end is mean. The force which in nature proceeds at an equal pace, and of which the sum is constantly being added to itself—the A + A from which everything is produced—is destructive in society. Politics, at the present time, place human forces in antagonism to neutralize each other, instead of combining them to promote their action to some definite end. "Looking at Europe alone, from Caesar to Constantine, from the puny Constantine to the great Attila, from the Huns to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from Leo X., to Philip II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV.; from Venice to England, from England to Napoleon, from Napoleon to England, I see no fixed purpose in politics; its constant agitation has led to no progress. "Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in monuments, and to their happiness in the welfare of individuals. Are modern monuments as fine as those of the ancients? I doubt it. The arts, which are the direct outcome of the individual, the products of genius or of handicraft, have not advanced much. The pleasures of Lucullus were as good as those of Samuel Bernard, of Beaujon, or of the King of Bavaria. And then human longevity has diminished. "Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the same; might is his only law, and success his only wisdom. "Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a different hue to the arena in which youthful nations disport themselves. "No development of politics has hindered civilization, with its riches, its manners, its alliance of the strong against the weak, its ideas, and its delights, from moving from Memphis to Tyre, from Tyre to Baalbek, from Tadmor to Carthage, from Carthage to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice, from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England—while no trace is left of Memphis, of Tyre, of Carthage, of Rome, of Venice, or Madrid. The soul of those great bodies has fled. Not one of them has preserved itself from destruction, nor formulated this axiom: When the effect produced ceases to be in a ratio to its cause, disorganization follows. "The most subtle genius can discover

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