Simple Duty

When you talk to children about a subject that bothers them, they point out to you some pigeon up on the rooftops feeding its young, or some coachman down in the street mistreating his horse. Sometimes, too, they mischievously ask you one of those big questions that set parents racking their brains: all this to draw attention away from the painful subject. I fear that we are big children in the face of duty, and that whenever duty is in question, we look for one subterfuge after another to distract ourselves.

The first subterfuge is to ask whether there is any such thing as duty in general, or whether the word merely covers one of the many illusions of our ancestors. For after all, duty presupposes freedom, and the question of freedom leads us all the way into the regions of metaphysics. How can we speak of duty as long as this grave problem of free will remains unsolved? In theory, there is nothing to be said against this. And if life were a theory, if we were here to work out a complete system of the universe, it would be absurd to concern ourselves with duty before we had demonstrated freedom and fixed its conditions and its limits.

But life is not a theory. On this point of practical morality, as on every other, life has gone ahead of theory, and there is no reason whatever to believe that it will ever give way to it. This freedom, relative, I admit, like everything else we know, and this duty whose very existence has been questioned, nonetheless lie at the foundation of all the judgments we pass on ourselves and on our fellow human beings. We treat one another as responsible, up to a point, for everything we do.

The most fanatical theorist, as soon as he steps outside his theory, has no scruple about approving or condemning the actions of others, taking legal proceedings against his enemies, or appealing to the generosity and the sense of justice of those he wants to dissuade from some unworthy course. We can no more rid ourselves of the notion of moral obligation than of the notions of time and space; and just as we must resign ourselves to walking before we know how to define the space we cross and the time that measures our movements, so too we must submit to moral obligation before we have touched its deep roots with our own fingers. The moral law rules over human beings, whether they respect it or break it. Look at everyday life: everyone is ready to cast a stone at the person who fails to carry out an obvious duty, even if he pleads that he has not yet arrived at philosophical certainty. Everyone will tell him, and will be a thousand times right to tell him: "Monsieur, you are a man before anything else. First give of yourself; do your duty as a citizen, a father, a son, and so on, and afterward you can take up the course of your meditations again."

Let us be clearly understood, however. We have no wish to turn anyone away from philosophical inquiry, from the scrupulous search for the foundations of morality. No thought that leads people back to these grave concerns could ever be useless or a matter of indifference. We simply defy the thinker to wait until he has found those foundations before performing any act of humanity, of honesty or dishonesty, of courage or cowardice. Above all, we want to formulate an answer, one good to set against all the clever folk who have never been philosophers, and to set against ourselves whenever we would like to invoke our state of philosophical doubt to excuse our practical failings. By the very fact that we are human beings, before holding any theory about duty, whether positive or negative, we have a firm rule: to conduct ourselves as human beings. There is no getting around that.

But anyone who counted on the effect of such an answer would know very little of the resources of the human heart. However unanswerable it may be, it cannot prevent other questions from springing up. The sum of our pretexts for escaping duty is as great as the sand of the sea or the stars of heaven.

So we entrench ourselves behind obscure duty, difficult duty, contradictory duty. Certainly these are words that call up painful memories. To be someone who lives by duty and yet doubt one's way, to grope in the dark, to find oneself delivered over to the conflicting demands of different duties, or again to stand before some gigantic, crushing duty that is beyond our strength - what could be harder? And these things happen. We have no wish to deny or dispute what is tragic in certain events and heartrending in certain lives. Yet it is rare for duty to have to force its way through such a conflict of circumstances and to flash from the mind like lightning from a storm. Such tremendous upheavals are exceptional. So much the better if we stand firm when they come; but if no one finds it surprising that oaks are uprooted by the gale, or that a walker stumbles at night on an unknown road, or that a soldier is defeated when he is caught between two fires, then no one will condemn without appeal those who have been beaten in moral struggles that are almost superhuman. To be overwhelmed by numbers and obstacles has never been a disgrace.

And so I lay down my arms before those who entrench themselves behind the impregnable rampart of obscure, complicated, contradictory duty. That is not what concerns me today; it is of simple duty, I might almost say easy duty, that I wish to speak to them.

In a year we have three or four great feast days, when all the bells ring, and a great many ordinary days. In the same way, there are a few very great and very obscure battles to be fought. But alongside them there is the multitude of simple, obvious duties. Now, while in the great encounters we generally hold up well enough, it is precisely on small occasions that we are seen to falter. So, without fear of being carried away by a paradoxical way of putting my thought, I will declare: the essential thing is to fulfill simple duty, to practice elementary justice. As a rule, those who lose their souls lose them not because they fall short of difficult duty and fail to accomplish the impossible, but because they neglect to fulfill simple duty.

Let us illustrate this truth with examples.

Anyone who tries to make their way into the humble lower depths of society soon discovers great physical and moral misery. The more closely they look, the more wounds they find, until at length the world of the wretched appears to them as a vast dark creation, before which an individual, with whatever means of relief they have, seems reduced to helplessness. True, they feel urged to hurry to the rescue, but at the same time they ask themselves: what good would it do? Clearly the case is among the most distressing. Some resolve it by doing nothing, out of despair. So they remain barren, and yet it is not pity they lack, nor even good intentions. They are wrong. Often a person does not have the means to do good wholesale, but that is no reason to neglect doing it retail. So many people excuse themselves from doing anything because, as they see it, there is too much to do. They need to be called back to simple duty. In the case before us, here is that duty: let each of us, according to our resources, our leisure and our abilities, form ties in the world of the disinherited. There are people who, with a little goodwill, manage to work their way into the entourage of ministers or to slip into the company of heads of state. Why should we not succeed in forming ties with poor people and making acquaintances among working people who lack the necessities of life? Once you know a few families, with their stories, their past and their difficulties, you can be of the greatest use to them simply by doing what you can and by practicing brotherhood in the form of moral and material help. True, you will have tackled only one small corner; but you will have done what you could, and perhaps led someone else to do what they can as well. By acting in this way, instead of merely noting that there is a great deal of misery, dark hatred, disunity and vice in society, you will have brought a little good into it. And if the number of people of goodwill like you grows even a little, the good will increase perceptibly and the evil will diminish. But even if you were to remain alone in doing what you have done, it could be said in your favor that you did the only reasonable thing, the simple, childlike duty that lay before you. And in doing so, you have discovered one of the secrets of the good life.

Human ambition embraces vast undertakings in its dreams, but we are rarely given the chance to act on a grand scale; even then, swift and certain success always rests on patient preparation. Faithfulness in small things lies at the foundation of everything great that is accomplished. We forget this too often. Yet if there is a truth we need to know, it is this one, especially in difficult times and painful passages of life. In a shipwreck, people save themselves on a broken beam, an oar, a piece of plank. On life's turbulent waters, when everything seems to have broken into fragments, let us remember that a single one of those poor fragments may become our means of rescue. Discouragement begins with despising what remains.

You have been ruined, or a great bereavement has struck you, or you have just watched the fruit of long labor being lost before your eyes. You cannot rebuild your fortune, raise the dead, or rescue your wasted toil. And in the face of the irreparable, your arms drop to your sides. Then you neglect to take care of yourself, to keep your house, to watch over your children. It is forgivable, and how well we understand it! But it is very dangerous! Letting yourself go turns a misfortune into a worse one. You who believe you have nothing more to lose are, for that very reason, about to lose what you still have. Gather up the remnants of your goods; take scrupulous care of the little that remains to you. And soon that little will comfort you. The effort we make comes to our aid, just as the effort we neglect turns against us. If you have only one branch left to cling to, cling to that branch; and if you are left alone to defend a cause that seems lost, do not throw down your weapons to join those who flee. After the Flood, a handful of survivors repeopled the earth. The future may sometimes rest on a single head, just as a life sometimes hangs by a thread. Take your inspiration from history and from nature: both, in their laborious development, will teach you that calamity, like prosperity, can spring from the smallest causes, that it is unwise to neglect details, and above all that we must know how to wait and how to begin again.

In speaking of simple duty, I cannot help thinking of military life and the examples it offers to those who fight in the great struggle that is life. A soldier would poorly understand his duty if, once the army had been beaten, he stopped brushing his clothes, polishing his rifle and observing discipline. "What is the use?" you may perhaps say. What is the use? Are there not several ways of being beaten? Would it make no difference to add discouragement, disorder and rout to the misfortune of defeat? No. We must never forget that the least act of energy in such terrible moments is like a light in the night. It is a sign of life and of hope. Everyone understands at once that all is not lost.

During the disastrous retreat of 1813-1814, in the depth of winter, when it must have been almost impossible to keep up any kind of appearance, some general, I do not know which, presented himself one morning before Napoleon I in full dress uniform and freshly shaved. Seeing him, in the midst of the rout, as well turned out as if he were going on parade, the Emperor said to him: "General, you are a brave man!"

Simple duty is also the duty nearest at hand. A very common weakness keeps many people from finding anything of interest in what lies close to them; they see only its petty side. What is far away, on the contrary, attracts and enchants them. In this way a fabulous amount of goodwill is spent to no purpose. We grow passionate about humanity, the public good, distant misfortunes, and walk through life with our eyes fixed on marvelous objects that captivate us far off at the edge of the horizon, while we tread on the feet of passersby or jostle them without noticing them.

What a strange infirmity, that keeps you from seeing those who are right there at your side! Many people have read widely and traveled far, but they do not know their fellow citizens, great or small; they live thanks to the help of a multitude of beings whose fate remains a matter of indifference to them. Neither those who inform, teach and govern them, nor those who serve, supply and feed them have ever drawn their attention. It has never occurred to them that there might be ingratitude or shortsightedness in not knowing one's workers, one's servants, in short, the few people with whom we have necessary social relations. Others go much further still. To some wives their husband is a stranger, and the other way around. There are parents who do not know their children. Their children's development, their thoughts, the dangers they run, the hopes they cherish are a closed book to them. Many children do not know their parents, have never suspected their sorrows and their struggles, nor fathomed their intentions. And I am not speaking of unhappy marriages, of those sad homes where every relationship is warped, but of decent families made up of good people. Only, all these people are very much absorbed. Each of them has an interest elsewhere that takes up all their time. Distant duty, highly attractive, I do not deny it, claims them entirely, and they are not aware of the duty nearest at hand. I fear they are wasting their pains. The base of operations for each of us is the field of our immediate duty. Neglect that base, and everything you undertake far away will be compromised. So belong first to your country, your town, your home, your church, your workshop, and then, if you can, set out from there to go further: that is the simple and natural course. One has to go to great lengths to supply oneself with very bad reasons before one can follow the opposite course. In any case, the result of so strange a confusion of duties is that many people meddle in a host of affairs, except the very things that may rightfully be asked of them. Everyone is busy with something other than what concerns them, is absent from their post and ignorant of their trade. That is what complicates life. Yet it would be so simple if everyone attended to what concerns them.

Another form of simple duty. When damage has been done, who should repair it? The one who did it. That is just, but it is only theory. And the consequence of this theory would be that the harm must be left as it is until the wrongdoers have been found and have repaired it. But what if they are not found? Or if they neither can nor will make it good?

Rain is falling on your heads through a broken tile, or the wind is blowing into your home through a broken windowpane. Before sending for the roofer and the glazier, will you wait until you have had the person who broke the tile or the pane arrested? You would find that absurd, would you not? Yet it is a very common practice. Children cry out indignantly: "It wasn't me who threw it, so it won't be me who picks it up!" And most adults reason the same way. It is logical. But it is not that kind of logic that makes the world go round.

What we must know instead, and what life repeats to you every day, is that the damage caused by some is repaired by others. Some destroy, others build; some soil, others clean; some stir up quarrels, others calm them; some cause tears to flow, others console; some live for iniquity, others die for justice. And it is in the fulfillment of this painful law that salvation lies. This too is logical, but with that logic of facts which makes the logic of theories look pale. The conclusion to be drawn is not in doubt. A person with a simple heart draws it like this: since the evil is there, the great thing is to repair it and to set to work at once; so much the better if the gentlemen wrongdoers will kindly contribute to the repair, but experience advises us not to count too much on their help.

But however simple duty may be, we still need the strength to carry it out. What does this strength consist of, and where is it to be found? We could never tire of speaking about it. Duty remains an enemy and a nuisance to us as long as it appears only as a demand from outside. When it comes in by the door, we go out by the window, and when it blocks up our windows, we escape over the rooftops. The better we see it coming, the more surely we avoid it. It is like the gendarme, that representative of public force and official justice, whom a clever rogue always manages to dodge. Alas! Even if the gendarme succeeded in collaring him, he could at most take him to the police station, but not onto the right path. For us to fulfill our duty, we must have fallen into the hands of a force other than the one that says: "Do this, do that; avoid this, avoid that, or else watch out!"

This inner force is love. When people hate their trade or go about it listlessly, all the powers on earth are unable to make them practice it with zest. But those who love their work go forward of their own accord; not only is there no need to compel them, it would be impossible to turn them aside. So it is with everyone. The great thing is to have felt what is holy and immortally beautiful in our obscure destiny; it is to have been led by a series of experiences to love this life for its sorrows and for its hope, to love people for their misery and for their nobility, and to belong to humanity with our heart, our mind and our inmost being. Then an unknown force takes hold of us, as the wind takes hold of a ship's sails, and carries us toward compassion and justice. And yielding to this irresistible impulse, we say: "I cannot do otherwise; it is stronger than I am." In speaking this way, people of every age and every walk of life point to a power that is higher than man, yet can dwell in the human heart. And everything truly elevated in us appears to us as a manifestation of this mystery that surpasses us. Great feelings, like great thoughts and great deeds, are a matter of inspiration. When the tree grows green and bears its fruit, it is because it draws vital forces from the soil and receives light and warmth from the sun. If someone in their humble sphere, amid unavoidable ignorance and faults, sincerely devotes themselves to their task, it is because they are in contact with the eternal source of goodness. This central force shows itself in a thousand different forms. Sometimes it is indomitable energy, sometimes caressing tenderness, sometimes the militant spirit that attacks and destroys evil, sometimes the motherly care that picks up from the roadside some bruised and forgotten life that was going to waste there, sometimes the humble patience of long research... But everything it touches bears its signature, and those whom it animates feel that it is through it that we have our being and our life. To serve it is their happiness and their reward. It is enough for them to be its instruments, and they no longer care about the outward luster of their position, knowing well that nothing is great and nothing is small, but that our actions and our life are worth only as much as the spirit that pervades them.