Èmile — Book 5, Part 11

"My dear Emile, do you think any man whatsoever can be happier than you have been for the last three months?

If you think so, undeceive yourself.

Before tasting the pleasures of life you have plumbed the depths of its happiness.

There is nothing more than you have already experienced.

The joys of sense are soon over; habit invariably destroys them.

You have tasted greater joys through hope than you will ever enjoy in reality.

The imagination which adorns what we long for, deserts its possession.

With the exception of the one self-existing Being, there is nothing beautiful except that which is not.

If that state could have lasted for ever, you would have found perfect happiness.

But all that is related to man shares his decline; all is finite, all is fleeting in human life, and even if the conditions which make us happy could be prolonged for ever, habit would deprive us of all taste for that happiness.

If external circumstances remain unchanged, the heart changes; either happiness forsakes us, or we forsake her.

"During your infatuation time has passed unheeded.

Summer is over, winter is at hand.

Even if our expeditions were possible, at such a time of year they would not be permitted.

Whether we wish it or no, we shall have to change our way of life; it cannot continue.

I read in your eager eyes that this does not disturb you greatly;

Sophy's confession and your own wishes suggest a simple plan for avoiding the snow and escaping the journey.

The plan has its advantages, no doubt; but when spring returns, the snow will melt and the marriage will remain; you must reckon for all seasons.

"You wish to marry Sophy and you have only known her five months!

You wish to marry her, not because she is a fit wife for you, but because she pleases you; as if love were never mistaken as to fitness, as if those, who begin with love, never ended with hatred!

I know she is virtuous; but is that enough?

Is fitness merely a matter of honour?

It is not her virtue I misdoubt, it is her disposition.

Does a woman show her real character in a day?

Do you know how often you must have seen her and under what varying conditions to really know her temper?

Is four months of liking a sufficient pledge for the rest of your life?

A couple of months hence you may have forgotten her; as soon as you are gone another may efface your image in her heart; on your return you may find her as indifferent as you have hitherto found her affectionate.

Sentiments are not a matter of principle; she may be perfectly virtuous and yet cease to love you.

I am inclined to think she will be faithful and true;

but who will answer for her, and who will answer for you if you are not put to the proof?

Will you postpone this trial till it is too late, will you wait to know your true selves till parting is no longer possible?

"Sophy is not eighteen, and you are barely twenty-two; this is the age for love, but not for marriage.

What a father and mother for a family!

If you want to know how to bring up children, you should at least wait till you yourselves are children no longer.

Do you not know that too early motherhood has weakened the constitution, destroyed the health, and shortened the life of many young women?

Do you not know that many children have always been weak and sickly because their mother was little more than a child herself?

When mother and child are both growing, the strength required for their growth is divided, and neither gets all that nature intended; are not both sure to suffer?

Either I know very little of Emile, or he would rather wait and have a healthy wife and children, than satisfy his impatience at the price of their life and health.

"Let us speak of yourself.

You hope to be a husband and a father;

have you seriously considered your duties?

When you become the head of a family you will become a citizen of your country.

And what is a citizen of the state?

What do you know about it?

You have studied your duties as a man, but what do you know of the duties of a citizen?

Do you know the meaning of such terms as government, laws, country?

Do you know the price you must pay for life, and for what you must be prepared to die?

You think you know everything, when you really know nothing at all.

Before you take your place in the civil order, learn to perceive and know what is your proper place.

"Emile, you must leave Sophy; I do not bid you forsake her; if you were capable of such conduct, she would be only too happy not to have married you; you must leave her in order to return worthy of her.

Do not be vain enough to think yourself already worthy.

How much remains to be done!

Come and fulfil this splendid task; come and learn to submit to absence; come and earn the prize of fidelity, so that when you return you may indeed deserve some honour, and may ask her hand not as a favour but as a reward."

Unaccustomed to struggle with himself, untrained to desire one thing and to will another, the young man will not give way; he resists, he argues.

Why should he refuse the happiness which awaits him?

Would he not despise the hand which is offered him if he hesitated to accept it?

Why need he leave her to learn what he ought to know?

And if it were necessary to leave her why not leave her as his wife with a certain pledge of his return?

Let him be her husband, and he is ready to follow me; let them be married and he will leave her without fear.

"Marry her in order to leave her, dear Emile!

what a contradiction!

A lover who can leave his mistress shows himself capable of great things; a husband should never leave his wife unless through necessity.

To cure your scruples, I see the delay must be involuntary on your part; you must be able to tell Sophy you leave her against your will.

Very well, be content, and since you will not follow the commands of reason, you must submit to another master.

You have not forgotten your promise.

Emile, you must leave Sophy; I will have it."

For a moment or two he was downcast, silent, and thoughtful, then looking me full in the face he said, "When do we start?"

"In a week's time," I replied; "Sophy must be prepared for our going.

Women are weaker than we are, and we must show consideration for them; and this parting is not a duty for her as it is for you, so she may be allowed to bear it less bravely."

The temptation to continue the daily history of their love up to the time of their separation is very great; but I have already presumed too much upon the good nature of my readers; let us abridge the story so as to bring it to an end.

Will Emile face the situation as bravely at his mistress' feet as he has done in conversation with his friend?

I think he will; his confidence is rooted in the sincerity of his love.

He would be more at a loss with her, if it cost him less to leave her; he would leave her feeling himself to blame, and that is a difficult part for a man of honour to play;

but the greater the sacrifice, the more credit he demands for it in the sight of her who makes it so difficult.

He has no fear that she will misunderstand his motives.

Every look seems to say, "Oh, Sophy, read my heart and be faithful to me; your lover is not without virtue."

Sophy tries to bear the unforeseen blow with her usual pride and dignity.

She tries to seem as if she did not care, but as the honours of war are not hers, but Emile's, her strength is less equal to the task.

She weeps, she sighs against her will, and the fear of being forgotten embitters the pain of parting.

She does not weep in her lover's sight, she does not let him see her terror;

she would die rather than utter a sigh in his presence.

I am the recipient of her lamentations, I behold her tears, it is I who am supposed to be her confidant.

Women are very clever and know how to conceal their cleverness; the more she frets in private, the more pains she takes to please me; she feels that her fate is in my hands.

I console and comfort her; I make myself answerable for her lover, or rather for her husband; let her be as true to him as he to her and I promise they shall be married in two years' time.

She respects me enough to believe that I do not want to deceive her.

I am guarantor to each for the other.

Their hearts, their virtue, my honesty, the confidence of their parents, all combine to reassure them.

But what can reason avail against weakness?

They part as if they were never to meet again.

Then it is that Sophy recalls the regrets of Eucharis, and fancies herself in her place.

Do not let us revive that fantastic affection during his absence "Sophy," say I one day, "exchange books with Emile; let him have your Telemachus that he may learn to be like him, and let him give you his Spectator which you enjoy reading.

Study the duties of good wives in it, and remember that in two years' time you will undertake those duties."

The exchange gave pleasure to both and inspired them with confidence.

At last the sad day arrived and they must part.

Sophy's worthy father, with whom I had arranged the whole business, took affectionate leave of me, and taking me aside, he spoke seriously and somewhat emphatically, saying, "I have done everything to please you; I knew I had to do with a man of honour; I have only one word to say.

Remembering your pupil has signed his contract of marriage on my daughter's lips."

What a difference in the behaviour of the two lovers!

Emile, impetuous, eager, excited, almost beside himself, cries aloud and sheds torrents of tears upon the hands of father, mother, and daughter; with sobs he embraces every one in the house and repeats the same thing over and over again in a way that would be ludicrous at any other time.

Sophy, pale, sorrowful, doleful, and heavy-eyed, remains quiet without a word or a tear, she sees no one, not even Emile.

In vain he takes her hand, and clasps her in his arms; she remains motionless, unheeding his tears, his caresses, and everything he does; so far as she is concerned, he is gone already.

A sight more moving than the prolonged lamentations and noisy regrets of her lover!

He sees, he feels, he is heartbroken.

I drag him reluctantly away; if I left him another minute, he would never go.

I am delighted that he should carry this touching picture with him.

If he should ever be tempted to forget what is due to Sophy, his heart must have strayed very far indeed if I cannot bring it back to her by recalling her as he saw her last.

OF TRAVEL

Is it good for young people to travel?

The question is often asked and as often hotly disputed.

If it were stated otherwise--Are men the better for having travelled?

--perhaps there would be less difference of opinion.

The misuse of books is the death of sound learning.

People think they know what they have read, and take no pains to learn.

Too much reading only produces a pretentious ignoramus.

There was never so much reading in any age as the present, and never was there less learning; in no country of Europe are so many histories and books of travel printed as in France, and nowhere is there less knowledge of the mind and manners of other nations.

So many books lead us to neglect the book of the world; if we read it at all, we keep each to our own page.

If the phrase, "Can one become a Persian," were unknown to me, I should suspect on hearing it that it came from the country where national prejudice is most prevalent and from the sex which does most to increase it.

A Parisian thinks he has a knowledge of men and he knows only Frenchmen; his town is always full of foreigners, but he considers every foreigner as a strange phenomenon which has no equal in the universe.

You must have a close acquaintance with the middle classes of that great city, you must have lived among them, before you can believe that people could be at once so witty and so stupid.

The strangest thing about it is that probably every one of them has read a dozen times a description of the country whose inhabitants inspire him with such wonder.

To discover the truth amidst our own prejudices and those of the authors is too hard a task.

I have been reading books of travels all my life, but I never found two that gave me the same idea of the same nation.

On comparing my own scanty observations with what I have read, I have decided to abandon the travellers and I regret the time wasted in trying to learn from their books; for I am quite convinced that for that sort of study, seeing not reading is required.

That would be true enough if every traveller were honest, if he only said what he saw and believed, and if truth were not tinged with false colours from his own eyes.

What must it be when we have to disentangle the truth from the web of lies and ill-faith?

Let us leave the boasted resources of books to those who are content to use them.

Like the art of Raymond Lully they are able to set people chattering about things they do not know.

They are able to set fifteen-year-old Platos discussing philosophy in the clubs, and teaching people the customs of Egypt and the Indies on the word of Paul Lucas or Tavernier.

I maintain that it is beyond dispute that any one who has only seen one nation does not know men; he only knows those men among whom he has lived.

Hence there is another way of stating the question about travel: "Is it enough for a well-educated man to know his fellow-countrymen, or ought he to know mankind in general?"

Then there is no place for argument or uncertainty.

See how greatly the solution of a difficult problem may depend on the way in which it is stated.

But is it necessary to travel the whole globe to study mankind?

Need we go to Japan to study Europeans?

Need we know every individual before we know the species?

No, there are men so much alike that it is not worth while to study them individually.

When you have seen a dozen Frenchmen you have seen them all.

Though one cannot say as much of the English and other nations, it is, however, certain that every nation has its own specific character, which is derived by induction from the study, not of one, but many of its members.

He who has compared a dozen nations knows men, just he who has compared a dozen Frenchmen knows the French.

To acquire knowledge it is not enough to travel hastily through a country.

Observation demands eyes, and the power of directing them towards the object we desire to know.

There are plenty of people who learn no more from their travels than from their books, because they do not know how to think; because in reading their mind is at least under the guidance of the author, and in their travels they do not know how to see for themselves.

Others learn nothing, because they have no desire to learn.

Their object is so entirely different, that this never occurs to them; it is very unlikely that you will see clearly what you take no trouble to look for.

The French travel more than any other nation, but they are so taken up with their own customs, that everything else is confused together.

There are Frenchmen in every corner of the globe.

In no country of the world do you find more people who have travelled than in France.

And yet of all the nations of Europe, that which has seen most, knows least.

The English are also travellers, but they travel in another fashion; these two nations must always be at opposite extremes.

The English nobility travels, the French stays at home;

the French people travel, the English stay at home.

This difference does credit, I think, to the English.

The French almost always travel for their own ends; the English do not seek their fortune in other lands, unless in the way of commerce and with their hands full; when they travel it is to spend their money, not to live by their wits; they are too proud to cringe before strangers.

This is why they learn more abroad than the French who have other fish to fry.

Yet the English have their national prejudices; but these prejudices are not so much the result of ignorance as of feeling.

The Englishman's prejudices are the result of pride, the Frenchman's are due to vanity.

Just as the least cultivated nations are usually the best, so those travel best who travel least; they have made less progress than we in our frivolous pursuits, they are less concerned with the objects of our empty curiosity, so that they give their attention to what is really useful.

I hardly know any but the Spaniards who travel in this fashion.

While the Frenchman is running after all the artists of the country, while the Englishman is getting a copy of some antique, while the German is taking his album to every man of science, the Spaniard is silently studying the government, the manners of the country, its police, and he is the only one of the four who from all that he has seen will carry home any observation useful to his own country.

The ancients travelled little, read little, and wrote few books;

yet we see in those books that remain to us, that they observed each other more thoroughly than we observe our contemporaries.

Without going back to the days of Homer, the only poet who transports us to the country he describes, we cannot deny to Herodotus the glory of having painted manners in his history, though he does it rather by narrative than by comment; still he does it better than all our historians whose books are overladen with portraits and characters.

Tacitus has described the Germans of his time better than any author has described the Germans of to-day.

There can be no doubt that those who have devoted themselves to ancient history know more about the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Gauls, and Persians than any nation of to-day knows about its neighbours.

It must also be admitted that the original characteristics of different nations are changing day by day, and are therefore more difficult to grasp.

As races blend and nations intermingle, those national differences which formerly struck the observer at first sight gradually disappear.

Before our time every nation remained more or less cut off from the rest; the means of communication were fewer; there was less travelling, less of mutual or conflicting interests, less political and civil intercourse between nation and nation; those intricate schemes of royalty, miscalled diplomacy, were less frequent; there were no permanent ambassadors resident at foreign courts; long voyages were rare, there was little foreign trade, and what little there was, was either the work of princes, who employed foreigners, or of people of no account who had no influence on others and did nothing to bring the nations together.

The relations between Europe and Asia in the present century are a hundredfold more numerous than those between Gaul and Spain in the past; Europe alone was less accessible than the whole world is now.

Moreover, the peoples of antiquity usually considered themselves as the original inhabitants of their country; they had dwelt there so long that all record was lost of the far-off times when their ancestors settled there; they had been there so long that the place had made a lasting impression on them; but in modern Europe the invasions of the barbarians, following upon the Roman conquests, have caused an extraordinary confusion.

The Frenchmen of to-day are no longer the big fair men of old; the Greeks are no longer beautiful enough to serve as a sculptor's model; the very face of the Romans has changed as well as their character; the Persians, originally from Tartary, are daily losing their native ugliness through the intermixture of Circassian blood.

Europeans are no longer Gauls, Germans, Iberians, Allobroges; they are all Scythians, more or less degenerate in countenance, and still more so in conduct.

This is why the ancient distinctions of race, the effect of soil and climate, made a greater difference between nation and nation in respect of temperament, looks, manners, and character than can be distinguished in our own time, when the fickleness of Europe leaves no time for natural causes to work, when the forests are cut down and the marshes drained, when the earth is more generally, though less thoroughly, tilled, so that the same differences between country and country can no longer be detected even in purely physical features.

If they considered these facts perhaps people would not be in such a hurry to ridicule Herodotus, Ctesias, Pliny for having described the inhabitants of different countries each with its own peculiarities and with striking differences which we no longer see.

To recognise such types of face we should need to see the men themselves; no change must have passed over them, if they are to remain the same.

If we could behold all the people who have ever lived, who can doubt that we should find greater variations between one century and another, than are now found between nation and nation.

At the same time, while observation becomes more difficult, it is more carelessly and badly done; this is another reason for the small success of our researches into the natural history of the human race.

The information acquired by travel depends upon the object of the journey.

If this object is a system of philosophy, the traveller only sees what he desires to see; if it is self-interest, it engrosses the whole attention of those concerned.

Commerce and the arts which blend and mingle the nations at the same time prevent them from studying each other.

If they know how to make a profit out of their neighbours, what more do they need to know?

It is a good thing to know all the places where we might live, so as to choose those where we can live most comfortably.

If every one lived by his own efforts, all he would need to know would be how much land would keep him in food.

The savage, who has need of no one, and envies no one, neither knows nor seeks to know any other country but his own.

If he requires more land for his subsistence he shuns inhabited places; he makes war upon the wild beasts and feeds on them.

But for us, to whom civilised life has become a necessity, for us who must needs devour our fellow-creatures, self-interest prompts each one of us to frequent those districts where there are most people to be devoured.

This is why we all flock to Rome, Paris, and London.

Human flesh and blood are always cheapest in the capital cities.

Thus we only know the great nations, which are just like one another.

They say that men of learning travel to obtain information; not so, they travel like other people from interested motives.

Philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras are no longer to be found, or if they are, it must be in far-off lands.

Our men of learning only travel at the king's command; they are sent out, their expenses are paid, they receive a salary for seeing such and such things, and the object of that journey is certainly not the study of any question of morals.

Their whole time is required for the object of their journey, and they are too honest not to earn their pay.

If in any country whatsoever there are people travelling at their own expense, you may be sure it is not to study men but to teach them.

It is not knowledge they desire but ostentation.

How should their travels teach them to shake off the yoke of prejudice?

It is prejudice that sends them on their travels.