Ajournement
Adjournment
Charles Péguy
I had meant to speak on behalf of my house at the opening of this first cahier. But the cahier is already full. I must finish publishing the communications that reached us before and during the holidays. We must begin publishing the announcements for the academic year we have now entered.
I had rather hoped, privately, that the cahiers would always be full and that I would always be spared the need to offer an apology. But a friend sends me this clipping from the press: — Cri de Paris — issue 198 — Sunday, 11 November.
People have wondered who wrote the fine articles in the Petite République, signed “A University Man.” They have been lightly attributed — by the Temps itself — to a certain M. H., who recently defended, at the Sorbonne, a thesis on German philosophy.
We can set the Temps straight. These articles are by a young philosophy professor from the South, a former student of the École Normale. Around M. Lucien Herr there is forming at this moment an admirable school of socialist philosophers who, abandoning abstractions and vain disputes, bring to the people their intelligence and their generous will.
The young philosopher’s name begins with an M and ends with an e. Guess…
I cannot know, and I have not asked, whether this notice was concocted by a clumsy friend of M. Herr or by an all-too-adroit enemy. The ways of the contemporary press are so bizarre that I can make nothing of them.
I worked for a long time with M. Lucien Herr, and I shall always cherish the memory I have of the action we carried out together. A simple company of simple citizens, of honest people, had freely formed — not around M. Lucien Herr, but without any leader. I was one of the very first to belong to it. M. Lucien Herr joined somewhat later. I may say that I was the manager of that company, just as I have become the manager of these cahiers. The current subscribers and friends of these cahiers formed, in the latter days, a little before the separation, a little more than two-thirds of the company. We were never an admirable school of socialist philosophers. Mutual admiration had no currency among us. It was understood that we would never form a school, but that we would remain a company of free men. It was understood that we would be socialists morally. It was understood that the philosophers would remain free in their philosophy and the scholars free in their science and the artists free in their works of art, given that by definition philosophy is philosophical and not socialist, that science is scientific and not socialist, that art is artistic and not socialist. Socialism is, on the contrary, that which seeks to give the people free access to philosophy, to science, and to art.
It is true that we had already abandoned vain abstractions and vain disputes. But never did we intend thereby to abandon anything that had been the passion or the labour of humanity in ages past. For my own part, I deplore the fact that several of our former comrades have merely substituted new vanities for old ones, granting an importance they do not deserve — first of all to sociological speculation, and secondly to the parliamentary political action lately inaugurated among the French socialists.
Finally, we never imagined that we would be bringing to the people any intelligence and generous will. Born of the people and ourselves of the people, poor and for the most part sons of the poor, we never had occasion to transport ourselves to the side of the people. This will that we have had, that we have, that we shall always have — to carry out moral socialist action in such manner and to such extent as we are able — has never seemed to us generous, because we are socialists in this sense: that we are certain the duties most often regarded as duties of generous charity are in reality nothing other than duties of strict justice.
Since the youthful ventures from which these cahiers were at last born also gave birth to the gathering in question, since our apprenticeships, our origins, and our beginnings have been indirectly handed over, distorted, to the gossip of journalists — and what journalists! ^(1) — it becomes unavoidable once more that, as soon as I am able, I should give in brief the history of my house.
I shall not have the floor in the next cahier. Our subscribers know that it will be constituted entirely, text and cover alike, by the novel of René Salomé, Vers l’action [Toward Action]. This novel promises us a very fine cahier of more than one hundred and twenty pages.
For the second series we are suppressing the numerous press copies we had previously distributed. Henceforth we shall send out only a few exchange copies. As much as we are resolved to exhaust our finances so that our cahiers may reach, free of charge, our friends the schoolteachers and the obscure militants, so much would it be futile to burden ourselves merely to be picked over in the vague editorial rooms.
^(1) Even more poorly informed than they are indiscreet. The articles signed in the Petite République “A University Man” are by no means the work of a certain M. H. who supposedly defended, at the Sorbonne, a thesis on German philosophy. But neither are they by a young philosophy professor from the South whose name would begin with an M and end with an e. They are by one of my former comrades, a former student of the École Normale, holder of the agrégation in philosophy, whose initials I shall not give, on leave in Paris. Though he is two classes above me and has risen one degree higher in rank, he has never looked down on me; he does not look down on me now. I do not know whether he belongs to a school formed around M. Lucien Herr. I know that he was not, with M. Lucien Herr, a member of the aforementioned company. I saw him a little at the recent socialist congresses. He asked me what I thought of his articles. If I saw him today I would say to him: My friend, be on your guard. I was unable to read your first articles, because I was prevented from doing so. But I have read the latest ones. Take care. They are not the work of a university man. When you sign “A University Man,” you designate yourself to the public by an accident rather than by your essential character — one may speak in such terms to a holder of the agrégation in philosophy. It is a little as if I were to sign “A Sorbonnard” because these cahiers happen at present to be housed at 16, rue de la Sorbonne. And yet in a sense I am a Sorbonnard, whereas what you write is not the work of a university man. The article in which you encouraged the anticlerical heckling is not that of a good teacher. We must never encourage heckling in the classroom. Let us also take care not to intoxicate ourselves when we polemicise with the Temps, which is a great bourgeois newspaper. Such polemics become as easily false in their resonance as most thesis defences. Take care, too, not to acquire the habit of journalism. — I would speak to him thus because I know him and because I know him to be a good citizen: not authoritarian, sincere, open to criticism.