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| Simone Weil
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction. Every perfect life is a parable invented by God. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded. I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances. In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs. It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance. More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. Nothing is less instructive than a machine. Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, "What are you going through?" The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil. The real stumbling-block of totalitarian rTgimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth. There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul. To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself. To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny. To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life. Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link. What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict. When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door. When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false? |
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