Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AMONG THE PEOPLE. (continued 2)

True inwardness.

But must one be serious to the point of ennui? Certainly not, it is not necessary. It does not belong to our temperament. Let us recognize, however, that to be enduring of ennui is a great power; it is the secret of slow, patient, painstaking labour, which spares no detail, which guarantees solidity in the foundations and remote and hidden elements of knowledge; it is the secret of the superiority of men of northern race over men of southern. In the south, owing to an impatience of what is tedious, there is manifested an inability to stick to one thing, to follow one pursuit, to venture into the darkness beyond where the light stops. Tasks pursued with obstinacy in the certitude of an ultimate success, indefatigable labour at the desk, reading understood as the absolute appropriation of every word and thought between the covers of the book in hand, are unknown to those superficial intelligences which are quick to take a birds-eye view of a subject in its entirety, but are impatient of details and of course among others of essential details. There are races of men who are incapable of anything exacting more attention than “skimming”; they skim their books, they skim the world, they turn the leaves of life. Neither true art nor true science is within their reach. “Live inwardly,” says the “Imitation.” It is an ideal which Frenchmen, who are particularly inclined to lose themselves in external details, might well pursue. But true inwardness does not necessarily consist in sterile meditation on a dogma. “Live inwardly” should signify, be serious, be yourself, be original, independent, and free; bestir your own powers of thought, take a pleasure in developing them and yourself; bloom inwardly like certain plants which lock up within themselves their pollen, their perfume, their beauty; but give out your fruit. The natural expansiveness which leads a Frenchman to be so communicative is one of his good qualities; the bad side of it, where there is a bad side, consists simply in not having anything serious to communicate.

Remedy for French levity.

Our defects are curable, and their remedy does not lie in a sort of religious asceticism, but in a more profound and complete understanding of the great objects of love that have always attracted the French mind—science, art, law, liberty, universal fraternity. There is a Japanese legend of a young girl who procured some flower seeds and was surprised to find them nothing but little black prickly grains; she offered them to her playmates, who would not accept them; then she sowed them, in some anxiety as to the results, and by and by a superb flower sprang from every grain and all her playmates begged for the seeds that they had refused. Philosophic and scientific truths are just such seeds; they are unattractive at first, but the day will come when mankind will prize them at their just worth.