The Spirit of Simplicity

Before we can set out what the return to simplicity that we long for would consist of in practice, we must define simplicity in its very principle. For people make about it the same error that we have just denounced, which consists in confusing the secondary with the essential, substance with form. We are tempted to believe that simplicity has certain outward features by which it can be recognized and in which it consists. Simplicity and a simple station in life, plain clothing, a dwelling without show, modest means, poverty: these things seem to go together. Yet that is not the case. Of the three men I have just met on my way, one was riding in a carriage, another was on foot, and the third was barefoot. The last is not necessarily the simplest of the three. For it may be that the one riding in his carriage is simple despite his high position and is not the slave of his wealth; it may also be that the man in shoes does not envy the one who drives by in a carriage and does not despise the one who goes without shoes; and finally it is possible that, under his rags and with his feet in the dust, the third hates simplicity, work, and sobriety, and dreams only of an easy life, pleasures, and idleness. Among the least simple of people we must count professional beggars, swindlers, parasites, the whole herd of the fawning or the envious, whose aspirations come down to this: to manage to seize a scrap, the biggest possible, of the prey that the fortunate of the earth devour. And in the same category let us place, no matter what circle they belong to, the ambitious, the schemers, the pampered, the miserly, the proud, and the overrefined. The livery makes no difference; we must look at the heart. No class holds the privilege of simplicity; no dress, however humble it may appear, is a sure sign of it. Its dwelling is not necessarily the garret, or the thatched cottage, or the ascetic's cell, or the boat of the poorest fisherman. Under every form that life takes, in every social position, at the bottom of the ladder as at the top, there are beings who are simple and others who are not. We do not mean by this that simplicity shows itself in no outward sign, that it has no bearing, tastes, or customs of its own; but we must not confuse these forms, which can, if need be, be borrowed from it, with its very essence and its deep source. That source is wholly inward. Simplicity is a state of mind. It lies in the central intention that animates us. A man is simple when his highest concern is to want to be what he ought to be, that is, quite simply, a man. This is neither as easy nor as impossible as one might imagine. At bottom it consists in bringing our aspirations and our actions into harmony with the very law of our being, and therefore with the eternal intention that willed us to exist. That a flower should be a flower, a swallow a swallow, a rock a rock, and a man a man and not a fox, a hare, a bird of prey, or a hog: that is the whole of it.

We are thus led to formulate the practical ideal of human life. In every life we observe a certain quantity of forces and substances joined together for a purpose. Materials, more or less raw, are transformed in it and raised to a higher degree of organization. It is no different with human lives. The human ideal, then, would consist in transforming life into goods greater than itself. Existence may be compared to a raw material. What it is matters less than what is made of it. As in a work of art, what we must value is what the craftsman has managed to put into it. We come into the world with different gifts. One has received gold, another granite, a third marble, and most of us wood or clay. Our task is to shape these materials. Everyone knows that the most precious substance can be spoiled, but also that an immortal work can be made from material of no value. Art consists in realizing a permanent idea in a passing form. True life consists in bringing higher goods - justice, love, truth, freedom, and moral strength - into our daily activity, whatever its place or outward form. Such a life is possible in the most varied social circumstances and with the most unequal natural gifts. It is not wealth or personal advantages, but the use we make of them, that gives life its value. Brilliance matters no more than length: quality is what counts.

Need it be said that no one rises to this point of view without effort and struggle? The spirit of simplicity is not something we inherit, but the fruit of a hard-won conquest. Living well, like thinking well, means simplifying. Everyone knows that science consists in drawing a few general rules out of the tangled mass of particular cases. But what obscurity and groping must be gone through before these rules are discovered! Centuries of research are often condensed into a principle that fits in a single line. In this respect the moral life closely resembles the life of science. It too begins in a certain confusion, tries itself out, searches for itself, and often goes wrong. But by acting, and by honestly taking account of his actions, a person comes to know life better. The law appears to him, and here it is: to fulfill one's mission. Whoever applies himself to anything other than accomplishing this aim loses, in the very act of living, the reason for life. That is what the selfish, the pleasure seekers, and the ambitious do. They consume existence the way one might eat one's wheat while it is still green. They keep it from bearing fruit. Their lives are lost lives. On the contrary, whoever makes life serve a higher good saves it by giving it. The precepts of morality, which appear arbitrary to a superficial eye and seem designed to thwart our zest for life, have in the end only one aim: to preserve us from the misfortune of having lived in vain. That is why they keep bringing us back to the same direction and why they all have the same meaning: Do not waste your life; make it bear fruit! Learn to give it, so as to keep it from being lost. In this the experience of humanity is summed up. This experience, which each person is obliged to make anew for himself, becomes all the more precious to him the more dearly it has cost him. Enlightened by it, he walks the moral path with a surer step; he has his means of finding his bearings, his inner standard to which he can refer everything; and from the uncertain, confused, and complicated person he was, he becomes simple. Through the constant influence of this same law, which grows within him and is confirmed every day by the facts, a transformation takes place in his judgments and his habits.

Once he has been seized by the beauty and greatness of true life, by all that is holy and moving in this struggle of humanity for truth, for justice, for goodness, he keeps its fascination in his heart. And everything comes naturally to be subordinated to this powerful and abiding concern. The necessary hierarchy of powers and forces organizes itself within him. The essential leads, the secondary obeys, and order is born of simplicity. The workings of the inner life can be compared to those of an army. An army is strong through discipline, and discipline consists in the respect of the subordinate for the superior and in the concentration of all energies on a single aim. As soon as discipline grows slack, the army suffers. The corporal must not command the general. Examine carefully your own life and the lives of others, the life of society. Every time something jars or creaks, and complications or disorder arise, it is because the corporal has commanded the general. Where the law of simplicity enters people's hearts, disorder disappears.

I despair of ever describing simplicity in a way worthy of it. All the strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, all that consoles and increases hope, all that sheds a little light on our dark paths, all that lets us glimpse, through our poor lives, some sublime goal and some immense future, comes to us from simple people who have given their desires another object than the passing satisfactions of selfishness and vanity, and who have understood that the science of life lies in knowing how to give one's life.