Advertising and the Unnoticed Good

One of the chief childish follies of our time is the love of self-advertisement. To break through, to make a name, to rise out of obscurity: some people are so consumed by this desire that they may fairly be said to suffer from an itch for publicity. In their eyes obscurity is the supreme disgrace, and so they do everything they can to be noticed. Living unknown, they regard themselves as lost creatures, like castaways thrown by a night of storm onto some deserted rock, who resort to shouting, gunshots, fire and every signal imaginable to let someone know they are there. Not content with setting off firecrackers and harmless rockets, a number of them have gone as far as baseness and even crime to make themselves known at any price. Herostratus the arsonist has had many disciples. How many people in our day have become famous only for destroying something notable, for demolishing or trying to demolish an illustrious reputation, for marking their passage, in short, with a scandal, an act of malice or some resounding barbarity.

This mania for notoriety does not rage only among cracked brains, or in the world of shady financiers, charlatans and ham actors of every rank; it has spread into every domain of spiritual and material life. Politics, literature, even science, and, more shocking still, charity and religion have been infested with advertising. Trumpets are sounded around good works, and shrill, garish methods have been devised for converting souls. Continuing its ravages, the fever for noise has reached retreats that are usually silent, unsettled minds that are generally composed, and to a large extent tainted the work of doing good. The abuse of showing everything, or rather of putting everything on display, the growing inability to appreciate what remains hidden, and the habit of measuring the worth of things by the racket they make, have ended by warping the judgment of even the most serious people, and one sometimes wonders whether society will not end up turning into one vast fair where everyone beats the drum in front of his own booth.

How gladly we leave the dust and the intolerable cacophony of the fairground shows to go and breathe freely in some secluded little valley, quite surprised to find how clear the stream is, how discreet the forest, how pleasant the solitude. Thank God, there are still inviolate refuges. However formidable the din, however deafening the confusion of clashing showmen's voices, it reaches only so far, then subsides and dies away. The domain of silence is wider than the domain of noise. That is our consolation.

Let us set foot on the threshold of that infinite world where the unnoticed good and silent labor dwell. At once we fall under the spell we feel at the sight of immaculate snows that no foot has marked, of flowers in solitary places, of lost paths that seem to lead toward boundless horizons.

The world is so made that the mainsprings of work, the most active agents, are everywhere concealed. Nature takes a kind of coquettish pleasure in hiding her labor. If you wish to observe anything more than results and enter the secrets of her laboratories, you must take the trouble to lie in wait for her and contrive to catch her unawares. So too in human society, the forces that work for good remain invisible, and so again in the life of each of us: the best we have cannot be imparted; it lies buried in our inmost depths. The stronger our feelings are, the more they are one with the very root of our being, the less they seek display; they would think it a profanation to hurry out into the full light of day. There is a secret and inexpressible joy in possessing deep within oneself an inner world that God alone knows, and from which nevertheless come our impulse, our zest, the daily renewal of our courage and our most powerful motives for acting in the world outside. When this inner life loses its intensity, when we neglect it to tend the surface, we lose in worth all that we gain in appearance. And so, by a sad fatality, it often happens that the more we are admired, the less we are worth. And we remain convinced that the best thing in the world is what no one knows, for only those who possess it know it, and if they told it they would at once rob it of its fragrance.

Some passionate lovers of nature love her above all at home, in her remote corners, deep in the woods, in the hollows of the furrows, wherever not just anyone is admitted to gaze on her. They would stay for days, forgetting time and life, watching in some untrodden solitude a bird build its nest or feed its brood, or some wild creature at its graceful play. That is how we must go and seek the good in its own home, where there is no longer any constraint, or pose, or gallery of any kind, but only the simple fact of a life that consists in willing to be what it is good for it to be, without caring about anything else.

Allow us to set down here a few observations taken from life. Since they remain anonymous, they cannot be thought indiscreet.

In my native Alsace, on a lonely road whose endless ribbon stretches on beneath the forests of the Vosges, there is a stone breaker whom I have seen at his work for thirty years. The first time I saw him, I was a young schoolboy leaving for the big city, and my heart was heavy. The sight of this man did me good, because he was humming a song as he split his stones. We exchanged a few words, and at the end he said to me: "Come now, my boy, take heart, and good luck!" Since then I have traveled that road again and again, in the most varied circumstances, painful or joyful. The schoolboy has made his way; the stone breaker has remained what he was. He has taken a few more precautions against the harshness of the seasons: a straw mat protects his back, and his felt hat seems to have sunk lower, the better to shield his head. But the forest still sends back the echo of his valiant hammer. How many squalls, poor old fellow, have swept over his back, how many adverse fortunes over his life, his family, his country! He goes on breaking his stones, and whether I am arriving or leaving, I find him again at the side of his road, smiling in spite of age and wrinkles, kindly, and ready, especially on bad days, with those simple words of a good man that carry such weight when they are beaten out to the rhythm of breaking stones. It would be utterly impossible for me to express the emotion that the sight of this simple man stirs in me. And he certainly has no idea of it. I know of no sight more heartening, and at the same time more severe on the vanity that ferments in our hearts, than this encounter with an obscure laborer who does his work as the oak grows and as the good Lord makes his sun rise, without caring who is watching.

I have also known many old schoolmasters and schoolmistresses who spent their lives at a task that was always the same: getting the rudiments of human knowledge and a few principles of conduct into heads that were sometimes harder than the stones. They did it with all their soul, throughout a hard career in which the attention of others counted for little. When they lie down in their unknown graves, no one will remember them but a few humble people like themselves. But their reward is in their love; no one is greater than these unknown men and women.

How many obscure virtues we discover, once we know how to look, in a certain class of people whom others have often ridiculed without realizing that they were making themselves guilty at once of cruelty, ingratitude and stupidity. I mean old maids. People like to remark that some of them are surprising in dress and manner, which, incidentally, is of no consequence; they are also quite willing to recall that others, very self-centered, have lost interest in everything except their own comforts and the well-being of some canary, cat or macaque in which all their powers of affection have been absorbed; and certainly these yield nothing in selfishness to the most hardened bachelors of the stronger sex. But what people are most often wrong to overlook is the sum of sacrifice modestly hidden in the lives of so many old maids who are quite simply admirable. Is it nothing, then, to have no home, no love, no future, no ambition for oneself; to take up that cross of solitude, so heavy to bear, above all when the loneliness of the heart is added to outward solitude; to forget oneself until one has no interest left on earth but aged parents, young orphaned nephews, the poor, the infirm, all that the brutal machinery of life throws out with the slag? Seen from outside, these almost effaced lives have little luster; they arouse pity rather than envy. Those who approach them with respect sometimes sense in them painful secrets, great trials long past, heavy burdens under which shoulders too frail are bending; but that is only the shadow side. One would have to be able to appreciate this wealth of heart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, this joyful gift of self, this invincible obstinacy in gentleness and forgiveness, even toward those who do not deserve it. Poor old maids, how many of the shipwrecked you have saved, how many of the wounded you have healed, how many who had gone astray you have gathered in, how many of the destitute you have clothed, how many orphans you have taken in, how many beings there are who would be alone in the world if they did not have you, you who so often have no one! I am wrong. Someone knows you: the great unknown Pity who watches over our lives and suffers with our misfortunes. Forgotten like you, and often blasphemed, she has entrusted to you some of her holiest messages, and that, no doubt, is why at times, as you pass discreetly by, one seems to feel something like the brushing wing of ministering angels.

Good hides under so many different forms that it is often as hard to discover as the best-concealed misdeeds. A Russian doctor who had spent ten years of his life in Siberia, sentenced to hard labor for political reasons, liked to tell of the acts of generosity, courage and humanity he had observed, not only in a number of the convicts but also in some of the guards. This time one would really be tempted to say: where will goodness go and make its nest? And indeed, life offers you great surprises and disconcerting contrasts. There are good people, officially recognized as such, highly rated in their circles, I would almost say guaranteed by the government or by the church, whom one can reproach with absolutely nothing except that their hearts are dry and hard; while one is astonished to find in certain fallen beings genuine tenderness and something like a thirst to devote themselves to others.

Allow me now, on the subject of unnoticed good, to speak of people whom it is customary today to treat with the utmost injustice - the rich. Some think they have said everything once they have denounced infamous capital. For them, all who possess a great fortune are monsters gorged on the blood of the unfortunate. Others, less declamatory, nonetheless constantly confuse wealth with selfishness and callousness. We must put an end to these errors, whether innocent or calculated. No doubt there are rich people who care for no one, and others who do good only for show. We know that well enough. But does their inhuman or hypocritical conduct rob of its worth the good that others do, and that they often hide with such perfect modesty?

I knew a man who had suffered every misfortune that can strike us in our affections. He had lost a beloved wife and buried, one after another, all his children, at different ages. But he possessed a great fortune, the fruit of his own work. Living in extreme simplicity, with almost no needs of his own, he spent his time seeking out opportunities to do good and making the most of them. How many people he caught in the very act of shamefaced poverty, how many schemes he devised to relieve distress, to bring a little light into dark lives, to spring friendly surprises on his friends, no one could ever imagine. His pleasure was to do good to others and to enjoy their surprise when they did not know where the shot had come from. He delighted in repairing the injustices of fate and in making families dogged by bad luck weep for joy. He was forever plotting, scheming and conspiring in the shadows, with a childlike fear of being caught red-handed. The better part of his exploits became known only after his death, and how many more will never be known.

Now that was a true sharer! For there are two kinds. Those who aspire to award themselves a share of other people's goods are many and common. To be one of them, it is enough to have a large appetite. Those who thirst to share their own goods with those who have none are rare and precious, for to enter that elite company one must have a good and worthy heart, detached from self, sensitive to the happiness as well as the unhappiness of one's fellows. Happily, the race of such sharers is not extinct, and it gives me unmixed satisfaction to pay them a tribute they do not ask for.

Forgive me for dwelling on this. It does one good to relieve one's bile, after so much infamy, so much slander, so much pessimism, so much charlatanism, by resting one's eyes on something more beautiful and breathing the fragrance of those out-of-the-way corners where simple goodness flowers. A foreign lady, no doubt little accustomed to Parisian life, was telling me not long ago of the horror she felt at the spectacle that met her eyes here: those ugly posters, those wretched newspapers, those women with dyed hair, that crowd rushing to the races, to the café-concerts, to gambling, to corruption, that whole tide of superficial and worldly life. She did not utter the word Babylon, but no doubt only out of pity for one of the inhabitants of that city of perdition. "Alas, yes, these things are sad, Madame; but you have not seen everything." "God forbid!" she replied. "No, on the contrary, I wish you could see everything, for if there are some very ugly things beneath the surface, there are others that are truly heartening. Look, just change neighborhoods, or watch at other hours. Treat yourself to the sight of Paris in the early morning; it will give you plenty with which to correct your impressions of Paris by night. Go and see, among so many other toilers, the good street sweepers, who come out at the hour when the revelers and the cutthroats are going home. Look at them: under those rags, those bodies like caryatids, those austere faces! How gravely they sweep away the remains of the night's feasting! You would take them for prophets at Belshazzar's door. There are women among them, and many old men. When it is cold, they blow on their fingers and go back to their drudgery. And so it is every day. They, too, are inhabitants of Paris. Then go out to the outlying districts, into the workshops, especially the small ones where the master works just like his workmen. Watch the army of workers marching to its labor. How brave these girls are, coming down so cheerfully from their distant neighborhoods to the workshops, the shops and the offices of the city! Then visit their homes; watch the working woman at her task. The wages are modest, the lodging cramped, the children many, and the husband is often harsh. Make a collection of the life stories of humble folk, of the budgets of small households; look long, and look well.

"Then go and see the students. Those you have seen causing such an uproar in the streets are many, but those who work are legion. Only they stay at home, and so no one knows about them. If you knew how hard they grind and toil in the Latin Quarter! You have seen newspapers full of the noise made by a certain set of young people who call themselves studious. The papers do talk about those who break windows, but why would they talk about those who sit up late over the problems of science or history? That would not interest the public. Why, when now and then one of them, a medical student, dies a victim of his professional duty, the papers record it in two lines. A drunken brawl takes up half a column. Its smallest details are set down and lovingly dwelt upon. All that is missing is the portrait of the heroes, and not always even that!

"I would never finish if I tried to point out to you everything you would have to go and see in order to have seen it all; you would have to make the round of the whole of society, rich and poor, learned and ignorant. And then, surely, you would no longer judge so severely. Paris is a world, and, as in the world at large, good hides there while evil struts about. When you look at the surface, you sometimes wonder how there can be so many scoundrels. When you go to the bottom of things, you are astonished, on the contrary, that in this tormented, obscure and sometimes horrible life there can be so many virtues!"

But why dwell on these things? Am I not advertising people who loathe advertising? That is not how I should be understood. Here is my aim: to draw attention to the unnoticed good, and above all to make people love it and practice it. The man is lost who takes delight in what glitters and strikes the eye: first, because he exposes himself to seeing chiefly evil; then because he grows used to noticing only the good that seeks to be seen, and because he easily succumbs to the temptation to live for appearances. We must not only resign ourselves to obscurity but love it, if we do not want to slip slowly to the level of the stage extra who watches his bearing only under the eyes of the audience and makes up in the wings for the restraint he has imposed on himself on stage. Here we are in the presence of one of the essential elements of the moral life. And what we are saying is not true only of those we call the humble, whose lot is to go unnoticed. It is true as well, and far more so, of those who play the leading roles. If you do not want to be a glittering good-for-nothing, a man all plumes and gold braid, but with nothing in him, you must play your leading role in the spirit of simplicity of the most obscure of your fellow workers. Whoever is worth anything only on parade is worth less than nothing. If we have the perilous honor of being in view and marching in the front rank, let us tend all the more carefully in our lives the inner sanctuary of unnoticed good. Let us give the building whose facade others look upon a broad foundation of simplicity and humble faithfulness. And then let us stay close to those who remain unknown, through sympathy and through gratitude! It is to them that we owe everything, is it not? I call to witness all who have learned, in human life, the strengthening lesson that the stones hidden in the ground hold up the whole building. All who come to have some recognized and public worth owe it to a few humble spiritual ancestors, to a few forgotten people who inspired them. A small number of good people, often including country folk, women, people defeated by life, and parents as modest as they are revered, embody for us a beautiful and noble life. Their example inspires and sustains us. Their memory remains forever part of our inward world. In painful hours we see them, courageous and calm, and our burdens seem lighter. They stand close around us, an invisible and beloved company that keeps us from stumbling and losing our footing in the struggle. Every day they show us that humanity's treasure is the good the world does not know.

Translator's notes

Herostratus: the Greek who set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in 356 BC so that his name would be remembered.

"Sharer" renders partageux, a mocking nineteenth-century French nickname for socialists and others who wanted property shared out.