Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne

Note on M. Bergson and the Bergsonian Philosophy

Charles Peguy

to the memory of our old master M. Humbert, who taught us such a good philosophy at the lycée of Orléans

All these debates that have been waged for the past two or three years on and for and against M. Bergson and the Bergsonian philosophy would have been greatly clarified — if anyone had wanted to clarify them — had people consented to examine what we mean by intellectualism. They have feigned to believe that the quarrel made against intellectualism was a quarrel made against reason, against wisdom, against logic. And against intelligence.

The philosophy of M. Bergson is almost as poorly understood by its adversaries as by its partisans. And that is no small thing to say. To begin with, reason is not wisdom, and neither the one nor the other is logic. And the three together are not intelligence. They are three — and four — orders; they are three — and four — kingdoms; and there are many others besides. Now the Bergsonian revolution, the Bergsonian invention, did not consist in displacing these kingdoms but in working a revolution within them from the inside. And it is not surprising that this philosophy, which is a philosophy of the inside, should end not by displacing kingdoms through an external movement, through an external translation, through an extrinsic substitution, but by renovating them, by deepening them, by rendering them themselves through an internal revolution worked within them.

The Bergsonian philosophy is not a physics of transfer, a mechanics, a kinematics of translation. It is an organics. And even a re-organics. And it is a dynamics.

There are orders, there are kingdoms, there are realms, there are disciplines. There is faith; there is love; there is art; there is philosophy; there is morality; there is science. And no doubt there would be others. And indeed one would have to say that there are not only kingdoms: there are provinces. And they are perhaps as separate as kingdoms. For there is perhaps nothing so contrary to the plastic arts as the musical arts. And there is perhaps nothing so opposed to the mathematical “sciences” as the natural “sciences.” And within morality I would perhaps distinguish a civics that would have my preference.

Bergsonism is not a geography; it is a geology.

It is not a matter of Brittany being Provence, or of Queen Anne being King René. It is a matter of Lorraine being thoroughly Lorraine, and of the Île-de-France being still more the Île-de-France, and being indeed the heart and the head.

Bergsonism is in no way a philosophy of metathesis and metonymy.

Or, to speak a Platonic and a pre-Platonic language, it is not a matter of the one being the other. It is a matter of deepening the one, and of deepening the other.

Bergsonism does not make compartmentalized maps.

Just as the revolutions of anatomy and of physiology in the natural sciences did not consist in opposing the animal kingdom to the vegetable kingdom, or the reverse, but in pursuing in parallel, in the two kingdoms, a certain restitution of thought in the face of two parallel realities, so the revolution of the Bergsonian philosophy did not consist in opposing or in displacing the kingdoms of thought or of being. It consisted in pursuing in parallel, in all the kingdoms, in all the orders, in all the disciplines, a certain re-situation of thought in the face of these parallel realities.

One must therefore not say that Bergsonism is a pathetic philosophy, nor a philosophy of the pathetic, nor that it opposes the pathetic or patheticism to the logical, or to the mathematical, or to the scientific, or to the rational, or to wisdom; nor that it tries, nor that it proposes, to substitute the pathetic for all that. It is within the pathetic itself that it operates, just as it operates in parallel within the logical or the mathematical. For there is an intellectualism of the pathetic just as there is an intellectualism of the logical, or of the mathematical, or of all the others. And everywhere it is the same.

One must give up this idea that the pathetic forms an inferior kingdom. It is like the others; it is, as in Molière, inferior when it is inferior, and not inferior when it is not inferior. It does not make an exception to these general rules of level. It is not inferior in itself, because it is the pathetic. It is inferior when it is of poor, of low quality. When it is the low pathetic. It is not inferior when it is not of low quality. No one will ever make me say that the comic is an inferior genre. As for the tragic, I confess that I see nothing human superior to the pathetic of Sophocles, and that for one half-chorus of Antigone I would give the three Critiques preceded by half a quarter-pound of Prolegomena. And by that I do not mean only — which is understood — that I would give them away in beauty, sub specie pulchri, but that I would give them away no less in truth, in reality, sub specie rei ac realitatis. And that there is in that pathetic, infinitely more and otherwise than in that critique, a knowledge, a deepening of the nature, of the reality of man and of fatality.

One must give up this idea that passion is troubled (or obscure) and that reason is clear, that passion is confused and that reason is distinct. We all know passions that are clear as fountains, and reasonings, on the contrary, that are forever running after the encumbrances of their baggage-trains. One cannot even say that passion is rich and that reason and that wisdom are poor, for there are passions that are flat as billiard tables, and there are wisdoms and there are reasonings that are full and ripe and heavy as clusters of grapes.

One ought to give up, once and for all, this idea of constituting once and for all hierarchies in which the different orders, the different kingdoms, would be not merely ranked but fixed in their ranking. That solution is a solution of laziness; that fixation is a fixation of laziness. It is within the different orders, within the different kingdoms, that one must seek, that one must pursue, that one must recognize hierarchies, subordinations, parallel coordinations. Of value, of merit, of clarity, of troubledness, of distinction, of depth. Parallel hierarchies, comparable, corresponding, and no doubt communicating.

Here again the one party and the other are mistaken, or rather the one party and the other abuse. But by the same error and by the same abusing. Instead of agreeing that there are deep passions and superficial passions, the novelists want it to be passion, as such, that is itself, in its essence, deep. They want it to have only to show itself, to be passion, in order to be deep. Because they want themselves to have only to show themselves, to treat of, and even to speak of, passion, in order to be deep and mysterious men. And on the contrary side, in opposition, the anti-novelists, the critics, want it to be criticism, as such, that is itself, in its essence, clear. They want it to have only to show itself, to be criticism, in order to be clear. Because they want themselves to have only to show themselves, to treat of, and even to speak of, criticism, in order to be clear men and illuminators. But I, who have no system and who for that reason will make no fortune (I mean even an intellectual one), am forced to confess that I see critics who are very troubled and pathetics that are very clear, just as I see deep critics and pathetics that are very superficial.

At bottom the novelists would like to have only to be novelists in order to be deep. No, my children: one must, in addition, be deep novelists. And the critics would like to have only to be critics in order to be clear. No, gentlemen. One must, in addition, be clear critics.

At bottom it is everywhere the same debate. It is the secret of the situation made for history and for sociology, and above all for historians and for sociologists, in modern times. The historians want to have only to be historians in order to know the past. The sociologists want to have only to be sociologists in order to know the societies of man. One moment, my lords. There is also needed the knowledge of the past, and of societies, and of man.

The poets are infinitely more reasonable (one expected as much), who admit very well that it is not enough to make verses in order to be poets. And if they did not admit it, everyone would readily admit it for them.

It is as if it were enough to dress oneself as a soldier in order to be brave. Just so, it is not enough to dress oneself as a novelist and as an aesthetician in order to be deep. And it is not enough to dress oneself as a critic in order to be clear.

One must therefore give up attaching qualities and hierarchies, like ready-made tunics, to certain orders, but pursue in parallel the search for these qualities and these hierarchies, as they are, with no ready-made idea, as they are given, within the different orders. And so to speak by climbing up along the inside of the different orders.

One must be stupid, one must not be systematic — and this too is indispensable if one is not to make a career: one must say what one sees. I see that the pathetic of the Greeks and of the French, being classical, is infinitely clearer than German criticism, which is romantic. Or rather, the pathetic of the Greeks and of the French is clear, and German criticism is not. And the criticism of the Greeks and of the French, being classical, is deep, and the German pathetic, being romantic, is not.

Nothing is so clear as the invocations or the lamentations of Antigone. Nothing is so clear as the stanzas of Polyeucte. By contrast, nothing is deeper than a Platonic analysis and criticism; nothing is deeper than an analysis and a criticism of Pascal.

Let us therefore cease attributing certain qualities to certain orders as though they were overcoats. But let us pursue in parallel within the different orders, and let us know how to recognize the parallel qualities.

Let us therefore also cease, and independently of their situations within the orders, considering as contradictory in themselves qualities that are in fact contradictory only in the classifications of the intellectuals. Where has it ever been seen that the clear excludes the deep, or that the deep excludes the clear? They exclude one another in books, in didactic treatises, in manuals. They exclude one another neither in nature nor in that other nature which is grace. Neither in nature nor in that second and superior nature which is the nature of grace. Homer, who is the greatest clarity, is he not also the greatest depth? Old Priam at the feet of Achilles, who is, if I may be permitted to speak thus, the maximum of the pathetic and of the classical and so to speak the maximum of the antique — being the maximum of ancient supplication — does he not give us together the maximum of clarity within the maximum of depth?

It is the romantics who invented that one had to be troubled in order to be deep, and that there was a ligature, a ready-made clothing, of the troubled or the obscure to depth. And their learned troublings, their artificial (intellectual) troublings, never allowed them to obtain anything but superficial depths. When Hugo followed his nature, his classical genius, he was deep and clear. When he wore himself out trying to be, and at being, romantic, he gave himself no end of trouble to obtain a mysteriousness made of wrapping paper.

(I do not wish, as they say, to inflame the debate, and to make it personal, and to wound anyone. But after all we have, at the cahiers themselves, a critic who is at the same time a novelist. I do not see, when he is a novelist, that he divests himself of his clarity, nor, when he is a critic, that he divests himself of his depth.)

Since the romantics could not deny that the classics were clear, they undertook to make it up on depth. They wanted to make themselves the specialists of depth. But those who are deep have never told themselves that they were going to be deep. And they have never told it to others.

So the romantics feigned that there was an opposition of nature between the clear and the deep, so that, the classics being evidently clear, it should automatically be understood that they were not deep. As if the verses of Racine most full of light were not also the most mysterious.

The deep and the mysterious is not necessarily dark and tormented. Nothing is as pure as the fold of the mantle of ancient prayer.

Of all the ideas that have ever been put into the form of maxims, I believe the falsest is without any doubt this one (and it has this in common with another that will come later, that it too is not by Barbey d’Aurevilly): that for passion everyone is fit. If I wished to speak a Christian language I would say that even for sin not everyone is fit. There is a choice and an election even of sin. The natures that are fit for sin are of the same nature, of the same realm, as those that are fit for grace. And grace and sin are two operations of the same kingdom. Many are called, few are chosen. And outside there is an immense rabble that, taken together, is fit neither for sin nor for grace. For sin together with grace are the two operations of salvation, hermetically articulated one upon the other. And outside there is the immense rabble of those who are not even capable of sinning, and whom I shall name the intellectuals or the intellectualists in the order of sin; of grace; of salvation.

I am convinced that it is the same in all the orders, and that there are very few beings who are fit for happiness, just as there are very few beings who are fit for unhappiness. And outside there is the immense rabble of beings who, together and by the same movement, by the same incapacity, by the same sterility, by the same unfruitfulness, are fit neither for happiness nor for unhappiness. And whom I shall name the intellectuals in the order of happiness.

Very few beings are aimed at, for whoever knows his Christianity. And outside there is that immense kingdom of disgrace, which consists in not even knowing what one is talking about.

So it is with passion. Love is rarer than genius itself. It is as rare as sanctity. And friendship is rarer than love. To say that for passion everyone is fit is as false, and I will say as foolish, and I will say as schoolboyish and as glibly said, as to say: For statuary everyone is fit, or: For mathematical analysis everyone is fit. There are intellectuals everywhere, and there are intellectuals of everything. That is to say: There is an immense rabble of men who feel by ready-made feelings, in the same proportion as there is an immense rabble of men who think by ready-made ideas; and in the same proportion there is an immense rabble of men who will by ready-made wills, in the same proportion as there is an immense rabble of “Christians” who mechanically repeat the words of prayer. And one could go on a long while and pass through all the compartments, and one could say: In the same proportion as there is an immense rabble of painters who draw by ready-made lines. There are as few painters who look as there are philosophers who think.

This denunciation of a universal intellectualism — that is to say, of a universal laziness consisting in always making use of the ready-made — will have been one of the great conquests and the instauratio magna of the Bergsonian philosophy. It is true that the immense majority of men think by ready-made ideas. By learned ideas. But it is true also, in the same way and everywhere, it is true that the immense majority of men see by ready-made visions. By learned visions. There is a universal laziness, and so to speak an indefatigable one. It is work that grows tired, but laziness, but tiredness does not grow tired. The denunciation of this laziness, of this tiredness, of this constant intellectualism, stands at the threshold of the Bergsonian invention.

People say to me: What is this invention that consists only in denouncing an old habit? What is this novelty that consists in denouncing — and even were it to consist in revealing — a hereditary defect? What is this positive thing that consists in not falling into the negative? What is this plus that consists simply in not falling into the minus? What is this acquisition, what is this conquest that consists in not losing one’s oldest provinces?

And I ask: do you know many others? To prevent man from descending certain slopes — is that not a giant’s labor? To prevent man from descending certain sentimental slopes, certain moral slopes, certain slopes of conduct — is that not the labor, and the greatest part of the secret, of so many arts and of the greatest moralities? To prevent man, to break him of the habit, to disencumber him, of descending certain mental slopes — if only one succeeded in it — certain slopes of thought: let us be convinced that there would be there, that there was there, matter, material for a very great logic, for a very great morality, for a very great metaphysics. Liberty, of which it is said that it is the first of goods, is generally obtained only by an operation of disencumbering. Why should reality, which is perhaps a deeper good, not also be obtained by an operation of disencumbering? And why should an operation of disencumbering not be an operation of extreme importance? The French Revolution was an enormous operation, an enormous historical event, because it pretended to disencumber the world of a pretended political servitude. And finally, was not the whole immense apparatus of the Incarnation and of the Redemption erected to disencumber man, to prevent him from remaining fallen into slavery, and I am almost tempted to say into the habit of original sin? For sin had above all become an immense habit. And slavery is so to speak the most habituated of habits.

One must, moreover, take care that this expression the ready-made, if it recurs constantly — as was natural, and as was to be expected — in the philosophy of Bergson, is led to recur there in two appreciably different senses. And which I do not see that anyone has sufficiently distinguished. When Bergson opposes the ready-made to the in-the-making (and I should very much like to know how he could say it in other terms) — (and one must after all have a good deal of ill will not to recognize, in this past participle and in this present participle, the heirs of two fine Greek middle-passive participles) — he makes an opposition, he recognizes a metaphysical contrariety of the order of the very order of duration, and bearing on the opposition, on the deep, essential, metaphysical contrariety, of the present to the future and of the present to the past. It is a distinction of the metaphysical order. (It is this deep and capital Bergsonian idea, that the present, the past, the future, are not only of time but of being itself. That they are not only chronological. That the future is not only some of the past meant for later. That the past is not only some former future, some future from within time. But that creation, in proportion as it passes, as it descends, as it falls from the future into the past through the ministry, through the accomplishment of the present, does not merely change date — it changes being. That it does not merely change calendar — it changes nature. That the passage through the present is the putting-on of another being. That it is the divesting of liberty and the investing of memory.) But when this same philosopher speaks of the ready-made in the sense of ready-made ideas, of ready-made thought, he takes the word in the sense in which one says a ready-made garment for a garment off the peg, instead of a garment made to measure. It is a distinction of fabrication, of operation, of cut, of technique. The Bergsonian philosophy wants us to think made to measure, and not to think ready-made.

All the more so since a ready-made garment is always a secondhand garment. It is a secondhand garment that is new instead of being a secondhand garment that is old. But it is always a secondhand garment. It is by chance that it fits, or that it is supposed to fit. It is not by a prior proper adaptation, by a prior proper cut. It is not by a unique adaptation, by a destined cut.

It is one of the greatest sources of sophisms and of errors, or — to remain within our comparison — I will say: it is one of the greatest warehouses of sophisms and of errors, that negligence of considering, that failure of considering, that defect of considering — I mean that negligence which consists in not considering, in neglecting to consider, that what is brand new is not necessarily entirely new. Many misinterpretations come from there, and many faults of judgment, errors of judgment. People generally believe that it is enough for an idea to be brand new for it to be new. They believe that it is enough for an idea to be brand new for it never to have been used. What an error. It has been used by the manufacturer. When a stage tree, when a stage love comes from the manufacturer’s shop, it is nonetheless an old tree, it is nonetheless a ready-made tree, and it is nonetheless of the stage. It may well be new, but it is not for all that a real tree, a tree in the countryside. It is not for all that a new tree in the world. It is not a question of degree, it is a question of order. Homer is new this morning, and nothing is perhaps as old as today’s newspaper. It is a question of nature and of essence. Just as in the Bergsonian philosophy the future, and at the limit the present, differs from the past not only chronologically but essentially and metaphysically, so a ready-made idea is ready-made in itself and essentially. It is manufactured ready-made, as a stage tree is manufactured ready-made and a stage tree. It comes into the world a ready-made idea, as a stage tree comes into the world ready-made and a stage tree. It is made of papier-mâché, it is made of painted paper. It is totally foreign to germination, to fruitfulness, to conception. There are men who reinvent, beings who relive, thoughts that re-conceive anew the oldest ideas. And there are men who make ready-made ideas. There are ideas that are ready-made while they are being made, before they are made, just as ready-made overcoats are ready-made while they are being made, just as stage trees are ready-made and are stage trees while they are being made. It is a question of nature or of artifice. It is a question of grace or of disgrace. Stage trees are not natural trees diminished, worn, aged, and good for nothing else. They are trees of another order. They are other trees. They are not natural trees flattened upon a flat. They are trees that came into the world flat. Just so, a ready-made idea comes into the world flat and ready-made.

— Is that all? people say to me. It is far from being all. But I say that even if there were only that, and considering only that, that itself would be capital, and would make a great philosophy. Cartesianism is a great philosophy. Cartesianism is one of the three or four great philosophies of the world. Now, what made the fortune of the Cartesian philosophy? I do not say that this fortune is illegitimate. I say: what made this fortune?

Let us set aside the pharisaisms of the school, the solemn editions of texts, the reprintings of the complete works. Let us set aside the academic celebrations. Let us set aside the official commemorations, and the centenaries, and the circumspections, and the false scholarly respects. That too is the ready-made, ready-made ideas. Let us be Bergsonian, both in the matter of the history of Cartesianism and in the matter of the history of Bergsonism.

What made the so high and so great and so just fortune of the Cartesian philosophy? Those who have read the complete works of Descartes elsewhere than in the limpidities of the manuals know that the whole fortune of Descartes and of the Cartesian philosophy was made by four or five lines that are in the Discourse on Method. And that is all. And these four or five lines, these four or five sentences, are precisely precepts of, so to speak, mental morality, a few prior principles of intellectual hygiene, rules of method in short — it is he who says so — not principles or revelations or conclusions of a system. It is again, in one sense, disencumbering and liberation. It is even, also, denunciation. Just as the Bergsonian philosophy began by being a denunciation of the ready-made, so the Cartesian philosophy began by being a denunciation of disorder. The Cartesian philosophy was essentially a philosophy of order, just as the Bergsonian philosophy is essentially a philosophy of reality. That afterward Descartes succeeded in imposing order, and even the idea of order, and forever, upon the thinking universe, and even upon himself, is another question, a subsequent question. That afterward Bergson succeeded in imposing upon the thinking universe, and even upon himself, and forever, the consideration of the pure real, is another question, a subsequent question. They are men. Have they obtained, will they obtain, a total success? It is not apparent that philosophers are destined to succeed totally any more than Caesar or Napoleon. But it would be easy to show that Bergson is an infinitely better Bergsonian than Descartes was a good Cartesian. And I will say: It is easy to show that Bergson is an infinitely better Bergsonian than Descartes was a good Cartesian. I see everywhere in Bergson the care for the consideration of the pure real. And in Descartes I see very great disorders.

Discourse on Method — and it would be better to write discourse on method for the right conduct of one’s reason and for seeking, or for finding, the truth in the sciences. It is a program, alas, and almost an electoral program. And it has been almost as little carried out as an electoral program. When, instead of rereading the program, and above all the title of the program, and above all the beginning of the title of the program, one considers the results, what does one see? One sees that Descartes was a great philosopher, a great metaphysician, a great mathematician, a great scholar. But a great one among others, in his rank, in the same rank as others, of the same kind and of the same nature as others, in the same order as the others, in the same order of certainty and in the same order of work — by no means a man without peer and without class, a man outside the established frame, a man to whom a sudden method, abruptly appearing in the history of the world, had delivered a secret of infallible and total certainty. It is with this discourse on method as with the famous Baconian rules.

The tables of Bacon never caused an invention or a discovery to be made. There is no instance of an invention or a discovery having been made by an official. Inventors and discoverers follow quite other instincts. Inventors and discoverers run quite other adventures. Inventors and discoverers have never been clerks of the registry. The tables of Bacon never served anyone but the professors, to show how an invention (and a discovery — but it is always an invention) ought to have been made, after it had been made. As for Bacon, he never invented anything but the tables for others to invent by. He never discovered anything but the tables for others to discover by.

Or rather the tables for others to have invented by, the tables for others to have discovered by.

The tables of Bacon never served anyone but the historians of inventions, to explain how the inventions had been made, after they had been made. And even how it was fated that they should be made; and that they should be made just so. It was not that at all. But the essential thing is that there should be a history. And above all, perhaps, the essential thing is that there should be historians.

The tables of Bacon are perhaps made for the controller. And for the inspector of the controller. They are certainly not made for the motorman.

I will not say as much of Descartes. He invented himself. He discovered himself. But the Descartes who invented, the Descartes who discovered, the Descartes who was philosopher, metaphysician, mathematician, physicist, physiologist, psychologist, and the rest — was a philosopher and a geometer and a mechanician and a physicist of genius who did not proceed directly from the discourse on method, who was not in direct connection, in continuous function, and so to speak in continuous creation, with the discourse on method. Whatever he may have had and thought of it himself. He was a metaphysician in his rank, in his place, which was a high one; a geometer in his rank; a mechanician in his rank; a physicist in his rank, among the first — by no means a deduced metaphysician, a deduced geometer, and continuously deduced; by no means a metaphysician, a geometer, a mechanician, a physicist to whom a secret of method, suddenly arisen in the history of the world, had conferred that infallibility promised from the outside. And I see today that in astronomy and in mechanics and in celestial physics there is a return to the hypothesis of the Cartesian vortices, and I am very glad of it, for it will have been a fine stroke of genius (but of the divination of genius), and I shall be still gladder when the return has been made for general physics as well. But if there is a return to it (the German says: if there will be a return to it), it will not be because the idea of the vortex is clear and distinct; it will be both because it will be more convenient and because it will fit more closely the new aspects of physical reality. It is not as a function of the discourse on method that the hypothesis of the Cartesian vortices will be readopted. It will not even be as a function of the Cartesian physics. It will be, if I may say so, in proportion to physics pure and simple. And with a view to physics pure and simple. The hypothesis of the Cartesian vortices will be taken up again because it will account better for the facts, for the observations, for the calculations established from the facts and from the observations. It will not be taken up again from taste but from force. One never takes anything up again except from force. It will not be taken up again from virtue but from great necessity. It will not be taken up again to assure the order of thought (after two centuries, and soon two centuries and a half, people have finally come to perceive that the laws of attraction and of universal gravitation were generally applicable and perfectly calculable, but that the very hypothesis of attraction at a distance and of gravitation at a distance was perfectly unthinkable — that is to say, finally, that Newton is metaphysically unthinkable). (For one sees ill how an ether could be a perfect conductor of attraction and of gravitation; how an ether could conduct instantaneously attraction and gravitation at a distance; how an ether could make instantaneous transports of forces that would be those of attraction and of gravitation.) The hypothesis of the Cartesian vortices will therefore not be taken up again to assure order, nor to assure thought, nor to assure the discourse, nor to assure the method. It will be taken up again because reality will be more like that, or will appear more like that, or will be found more like that.

The hypothesis of the Cartesian vortices will not be taken up again because it will be in conformity with the Discourse on Method, but because it will be in conformity — or because it will be thought to be in conformity — with the discourse of reality.

The hypothesis of the Cartesian vortices will not be taken up again because it will be in conformity with Descartes, but because it will be thought to be in conformity with reality.

Did Descartes himself deduce his metaphysics, his physics, his physiology, his whole system, from his method? He did not even deduce it whole from his principles. He did not even deduce it whole from the I think. He himself said that experience must come to meet deduction. He meant by that, and quite explicitly, that deduction — whether mathematical or logical or metaphysical, and generally philosophical — could end, and sometimes (or often) did end, in double or multiple cases, in cases that Leibniz would have called indifferent: that is to say, in cases such that the last deduced solution, the solution that finds itself last in the line of deductive filiation, leaves us so to speak in suspense before two or several equal effective solutions, before two or several equal realized or realizable solutions, before two or several solutions for the realization of the detail. It is to arbitrate between these two or several equal solutions — that is, solutions that equally satisfy the conditions of the last deductive solution — that Descartes brings experience back in. He admits, he wants, that, going in reverse, recurrens, regrediens, experience should go back up (starting from the facts, from the phenomena, from the observations, from the experiments), and should come to meet that deductive line which had remained, so to speak, on the knife-edge of fate.

Reality, at each of its points, is like a besieged town. The royal army has set out to relieve it. But the royal army cannot itself reach it, and a sortie from the place itself must come out to meet it and give it a hand. At this intermediate point between man and the world, at this intermediate point between mind and reality, at this intermediate point where the link is established between the relieving army and, literally, the place’s own relief — at this point there is worked, for Descartes, the knowledge of truth. And one must not doubt that for him it is worked absolutely, and that this knowledge of truth is absolute. No one has anything more to say. The mind comes from one side. The object of the mind comes from the other, and to meet it. Neither has the mind anything more to say, nor has the object anything more to say.

I shall be permitted here to open a note within this Note. It is impossible not to consider, with a kind of seizure, how faithfully kindred this Cartesian theory is, how parallel it is, to the Christian and Catholic theory of grace, to what we have the right to call the mechanism of grace. As experience must come to meet reason, so, and by a perfectly comparable and perfectly parallel movement, liberty must come to meet grace. Man too is that besieged town. Sin too is that perfectly regulated blockade. Grace too is that royal army that comes to the relief. But man’s liberty too must make a sortie, erumpat, and go out to meet that relieving army. That is what Péguy said when he said that, through the creation of man’s liberty and through the play of that liberty, God has put himself into dependence upon man. For one must not consider only the frontier place. One must consider “Versailles and Saint-Denis.” If the place is not relieved, it is lost. But if it does not relieve itself by that sortie, it is lost.

It is a double disaster. If, at the point of connection, the sortie from the place does not give a hand to the relieving army, the relieving army too does not give a hand to the sortie from the place.

If the one army does not find the other come to meet it, the other too does not find the one.

When one fails to meet, one fails to meet by two. The fault of man makes even God fail to meet. When grace does not find liberty come to meet it, liberty too does not find grace. The failure of meeting is necessarily double. When man fails to meet God, God fails to meet man. When the place is lost, Versailles too, the kingdom too, loses a place.

“Moreover I observed, touching experiments, that they are the more necessary the more advanced one is in knowledge; for, at the beginning, it is better to make use only of those that present themselves of their own accord to our senses, and which we could not be ignorant of provided we reflect on them ever so little, than to seek out rarer and more studied ones: the reason being that these rarer ones often deceive, when one does not yet know the most common causes, and that the circumstances on which they depend are almost always so particular and so small that it is very difficult to remark them. But the order I have followed in this has been as follows. First I tried to find in general the principles or first causes of all that is or that can be in the world,…”

… Of all that is or that can be — there, exactly, is the fissure.

… “without considering for this effect anything but God alone who created it, nor drawing them from anywhere but from certain seeds of truths that are naturally in our souls. After that, I examined what were the first and most ordinary effects that one could deduce from these causes; and it seems to me that by this means I found heavens, stars, an earth, and even upon the earth water, air, fire, minerals, and some other such things, which are the most common of all and the simplest, and consequently the easiest to know. Then, when I wished to descend to those that were more particular, so many diverse ones presented themselves to me that I did not believe it was possible for the human mind to distinguish the forms or species of bodies that are on the earth from an infinity of others that could be there if it had been God’s will to put them there, nor consequently to refer them to our use, unless one comes to meet the causes by the effects, and makes use of several particular experiments. After which, going back over my mind upon all the objects that had ever presented themselves to my senses, I dare well say that I remarked in them nothing that I could not conveniently enough explain by the principles I had found. But I must also confess that the power of nature is so ample and so vast, and that these principles are so simple and so general, that I hardly remark any particular effect any more without at once knowing that it can be deduced from them in several diverse ways, and that my greatest difficulty is ordinarily to find in which of these ways it depends on them; for to this I know no other expedient than to seek anew for some experiments that are such that their outcome would not be the same if it is in one of these ways that one must explain it as if it is in the other. As for the rest, I am now so far advanced that I see, it seems to me, well enough by what means one ought to set about making most of those that may serve this effect: but I see also that they are such, and in such great number, that neither my hands nor my income — though I had a thousand times more than I have — could suffice for them all; so that, according as I shall henceforth have the means of making more or fewer of them, I shall also advance more or less in the knowledge of nature: which I promised myself to make known by the treatise I had written, and to show so clearly therein the utility that the public can receive from it, that I would oblige all those who desire in general the good of men — that is to say, all those who are in fact virtuous, and not by false semblance, nor only by opinion — both to communicate to me those they have already made, and to help me in the search for those that remain to be made.”

Who does not see that through such a breach all the non-deduced can re-enter? (If each time one must leave the deductive line at a certain point of suspense, make a leap — where, in what direction, and how does one know that it is in that direction? — and find the point of reality from which one must come back to that point of suspense.) But a great philosophy is not one that has no breaches. It is one that has citadels.

A great philosophy is not one that is never beaten. But a small philosophy is always one that does not fight.

A singular journey that Descartes proposes to us. (But he is indeed forced to it.) A singular journey, the Cartesian journey. It is properly the interrupted journey. It is the discontinuous journey. One descends, one stops (or one is stopped), one leaps (where, and how), one touches a point that will be the definitive point of arrival and that for the moment is a momentary point of departure, one climbs back up, one returns to the point of stoppage, one descends again to the definitive point of arrival. One sets out, one descends, one stops, one leaps, one climbs back up, one descends again, one arrives. One goes, one leaps, one returns, one goes again. What does it matter? Because a journey is singular, because it is interrupted, because it is discontinuous, and even because it is partly retrograde, that is no reason not to make it. What does it matter, if the journey is bold, if the attempt is fruitful, if the adventure is rewarded? Which comes to saying that a great philosophy is not a philosophy that is not contested. It is a philosophy that conquers somewhere. A great philosophy is not a philosophy beyond reproach. It is a philosophy without fear.

A great philosophy is not a dictation. The greatest is not the one that has no mistake.

A great philosophy is not the one against which there is nothing to say. It is the one that has said something.

And it is even the one that had something to say. Even if it had not been able. To say it.

It is not the one that has no faults. It is not the one that has no voids. It is the one that has fullnesses.

It is not a matter of confounding. It is in the schools that it is a matter of confounding. It is not even a matter of convincing. In convaincre there is vaincre, “to conquer,” as Victor Hugo loved to repeat to me.

To confound the adversary, in matters of philosophy — what coarseness.

The true philosopher knows very well that he is not set up facing his adversary, but that he is set up beside his adversary and the others, facing a reality ever greater and more mysterious.

And this, even the true physicist also knows. That he is not set up facing the opposing physicist, but beside the opposing physicist, facing a nature ever deeper and more mysterious.

To attend a debate of philosophy, or to take part in one, with the idea that one is going to convince or to reduce one’s adversary, or that one is going to see one of the two adversaries confound the other, is to show that one does not know what one is talking about; it is to bear witness to a great incapacity, baseness, and barbarism. It is to bear witness to a great lack of culture. It is to show that one is not of that country.

If the Discourse on Method has a meaning, it is indeed that one must go step by step and with extreme prudence. Thereupon it ends in a gait, in a progress, in a procedure that requires one to leap between the point of suspense and the point of arrival.

If the Discourse on Method has a meaning, it is indeed that the procedure from the mind to the object must be a deduction, a continuous gradation. A continuous going. Thereupon the real Cartesian journey is a going, then a return and a going.

When I was a child, in the provinces of the Center, every time there was, in games, a distance to be measured on the ground — for example for the “prisoners” in “bars” — we took good care not to measure by strides, because we thought that even involuntarily strides could be unequal. We measured (and we counted) foot by foot: that is, the back of the heel of the right foot just and moderately resting against the tip of the toe of the left foot. And so on, alternately. It was the old “straw, hay” of the fallen regimes, become, under the Republic and since the government of reason, “left, right.” And it was “straw” that had become the left foot, and “hay” that had become the right foot. But in former times one counted and measured by “straw, hay” and not by “left, right.” Now Descartes is a man who, in the second part of the Discourse on Method, wants one to advance only foot by foot, and who, in the fourth part — placing himself, going to place himself, by the I think, at the very heart of being and of the self and of thought — proceeds, in order to set out, by the most prodigious bound there perhaps is in the history of metaphysics.

Shall I say that he allowed himself an easy time of it, and that perhaps he had need, sooner than he says, for experience to come to meet him and to make him see what its outcome would be? He believes that he has deduced the heavens, the stars, an earth. He believes that he has deduced water, air, fire, minerals, and some other such things. Perhaps, if he had never seen the heavens, he would not have deduced them so easily. Perhaps, if he had never seen the heavens, he would not have found them. And so with some other such things. Perhaps, if he had not had a certain experience of the heavens, he would not have had so easily such a knowledge of the outcome of the heavens. He wants it to be only when he wished to descend to things that were more particular that he had need for experience to come to meet him. One is allowed to wonder whether experience did not come to meet him as far as the beginning of the sky. One is almost allowed to wonder whether experience did not come to meet him as far as the beginning of God.

We who have seen all the progress and the developments of physics since Descartes, and who see them every day — what can we think of such a qualification, and consequently of such an affirmation, that the heavens, the stars, an earth, and even upon the earth water, air, fire, minerals, and some other such things would be the most common of all and the simplest, and consequently the easiest to know? Very few physicists today would dare to speak of the easy to know. And in Descartes was I not right to speak of a certain electoral program, and of a certain tone of an electoral program? But what does that mean, if not that I find here a reinforcement of what I was advancing at the beginning of this note: that it is not because Descartes’s method is good that it had so high a fortune, but because it is a method? That is why it has inscribed itself in eternal history.

It is not because it is victorious, it is because it fights. It is not because it arrives, it is because it sets out.

It is solely, at bottom, because it is resolute. People follow those who march. And it is because it marches in the French fashion. “My second maxim” (it is a maxim of his morality — but what I claim is that his method too is a morality, a morality of thought or a morality for thinking; or, if one will, everything with him is morality, because everything with him is conduct and will of conduct. His provisional morality is a provisional morality for the conduct of conduct, ordinary, personal, and social. His method is an inaugural morality for the conduct of thought. But the one and the other are conjoined and have exactly the same procedure): “My second maxim was to be the firmest and the most resolute in my actions that I could,…”

At bottom his great maxim of method is also to be the firmest and the most resolute in his thoughts that he could. And perhaps his greatest invention, and his novelty, and his greatest stroke of genius and of strength, is to have conducted his thought deliberately like an action.

“and to follow no less the most doubtful opinions, once I had determined upon them,…”

To follow no less the most doubtful opinions, once he had determined upon them,… there is what will scandalize every man who is not a philosopher and every man who has no culture. The fact is that, of the two poles of this sentence, of the two beats of this maxim, it is determined that is stronger than doubtful; it is determined that is more important than doubtful; it is determined that prevails. Vim patitur. It is determination, assurance, resolution that conquers. His resolution is no less mental than moral. It is no less of mental conduct than of moral conduct. It plays no less a part in the one than in the other. In morality it is supposedly provisional. In the mental it is liminal and inaugural. Everywhere it is the deepest thing of his race and of his genius.

… “as if they had been very sure: imitating in this the travelers who, finding themselves lost in some forest, ought not to wander turning round, now to one side, now to another, nor still less to stop in one place, but to walk always as straight as they can toward one same side, and not to change it for weak reasons, even though it may have been at the beginning only chance alone that determined them to choose it; for, by this means, if they do not go just where they desire, they will at least arrive in the end somewhere where in all likelihood they will be better than in the middle of a forest.”

The whole question is precisely to know whether thought too is not better off anywhere than in the middle of a forest. What I say is that precisely because his morality was provisional, precisely because it did not enter into his system, because it was not settled, because it was so to speak not official, precisely because he defended himself less over it, observed himself less over it — it is this morality that delivers his secret to us. His secret is indeed to go always in the same direction, and, in the evening, to arrive somewhere.

The whole question is in fact to know whether thought itself does not enter into certain conditions, whether it is not subject to certain general conditions of man and of being, which are organic conditions, and one of which would precisely be that anything is better than going round in circles.

To set out, to walk straight, to arrive somewhere. To arrive elsewhere rather than not to arrive. To arrive where one was not going rather than not to arrive. Above all, to arrive. Anything, rather than to roam. And that the greatest error is still to “wander astray”: there is his very nature and the breed of his secret.

I should not wish to make him suspect of that pragmatism with which the Bergsonian philosophy has so often been reproached (wrongly, in my opinion, and one day I shall show it); but after all it is evident that the Cartesian philosophy is a system of thought in which to arrive is of an eminent price, and even of a unique price. Anything, rather than to have no lodging this evening.

The hope of arriving late in some wild place.

If Descartes’s method had been good, in the sense in which he himself understood it — that is to say, if it had had within it, if it had led automatically to, a certain certainty that he announced and that was in truth an authentic infallibility — it would not have led him immediately, and almost at the same time, to propositions that seem to us today so scandalous. (As to declare that heavens and an earth are easy to know.) Where is that evidence that was to settle everything? And what is this evidence that was to be universal and that does not outlast its author, that was to be eternal and that does not survive its author, that did not even live perhaps as long as its author? What then does that mean, if not that a great philosophy is not the one that settles questions once and for all, but the one that poses them; that a great philosophy is not the one that pronounces, but the one that requires?

Descartes promises a method of certainty, and immediately after, and almost at the same time, he falls into propositions that soon seem to us scandalous. Or rather he reaches propositions that soon seem to us scandalous. But a great philosophy is not the one that hands down decrees. It is perhaps the one that renders services. It is in any case the one that introduces motions.

A great philosophy is not the one that pronounces definitive judgments, that installs a definitive truth. It is the one that introduces a disquiet, that opens a shaking.

The world has perhaps not followed the Cartesian method, and Descartes certainly did not follow it. But Descartes and the world followed the Cartesian shaking.

A great philosophy is not the one in which there is nothing to take up again. It is the one that has taken up something.

A great philosophy is not the one that is invincible in reasonings. It is not even the one that once, on a certain occasion, conquered. It is the one that once fought.

And the small philosophies, which are not even philosophies, are those that pretend to fight.

It is no use confounding and convincing. When it is over, no one is confounded, no one either is convinced. But some are registered, some are incorporated. The others are not.

This proposition of Descartes, that the heavens, the stars, an earth, water, air, fire, minerals, and some other such things would be the most common of all and the simplest, and consequently the easiest to know, seems to us at once preposterous. What does it matter? What one must know is whether the first words of this Discourse on Method were the point of origin of an immense shaking, of a wave, of an immense circular surge in the Ocean of thought. Upon the face of the ocean of thought.

A great philosophy is not the one that is first in composition. It is not the one that is first in the essay. It is in the philosophy classes that one conquers by reasonings. But philosophy does not go to philosophy classes.

A philosophy, too, is not a court of justice. It is not a matter of being right or being wrong. It is a mark of great coarseness (in philosophy) to want to be right; and still more, to want to be right against someone. And it is a mark of the same coarseness to attend a debate of philosophy with the thought of seeing one of the two adversaries be wrong or be right. Against the other. Speak to me only of a philosophy that is more deliberate, like that of Descartes, or deeper, or more attentive, or more pious. Or more supple. Speak to me of a severe philosophy. Or of a happy philosophy. Speak to me above all of a certain fidelity to reality, which I set above everything.

A great philosophy is not, finally, the one that lies down, all at once, upon every position, upon every battlefield. It is only the one that, one day, fought well in the corner of that wood:

Happy are those who died for four corners of earth.

Napoleon no longer occupies the cemetery of Eylau. And he no longer pitches his tent at the foot of the Pyramids. But there was the campaign of Egypt, the campaign of Russia, the wars of Germany, and there was the campaign of France.

I do not wish, in this simple note, to enter into the substance of the Bergsonian debate. If I can do it one day I shall speak as a Christian and as a Catholic. I shall speak without authority, but I shall not speak without understanding and without intelligence. That the battle waged around Bergson should be so furious is in the order of things. But that it should be waged so back-to-front is a veritable scandal. Much would have been done, perhaps everything would have been done, if only people had forced the combatants to occupy their true lines of battle. Acies suas, non alienas, non contrarias, instruere.

Today I wish only to mark beats. Just as Hugo is classical in the first beat and romantic in the second, so a philosophy can be in several beats, and it generally is in several beats. There is also history. Whatever one may think metaphysically of the Cartesian system, when Descartes had made his method burst forth, cum irrupisset, when he had made his method enter by irruption, he had conquered his share in eternal history. Whatever one may think metaphysically of the Bergsonian system, when Bergson made his method spring forth, he conquered his share in eternal history.

It would be vain to fall back on the claim that Descartes’s method would be a positive method and that Bergson’s method would be a purely negative method. Descartes’s method is positive only in appearance. And I will say, in apparatus. It comes essentially to climbing violently back up a slope, and to making the mind climb it back up. I will say, to making man climb it back up. And the Bergsonian method comes essentially to climbing briskly back up a slope, and to making man and the mind climb it briskly back up.

In the sense in which Cartesianism consisted in climbing back up the slope of disorder, in that same sense Bergsonism consisted in climbing back up the slope of the ready-made.

Every great philosophy has a first beat, which is a beat of method, and a second beat, which is a beat of metaphysics. When one says that Platonism is a philosophy of the dialectic, and Cartesianism a philosophy of order, and Bergsonism a philosophy of the real, one takes all three in their beat of method. When one says that Platonism is a philosophy of the idea, and Cartesianism a philosophy of substance, and Bergsonism a philosophy of duration, one takes all three in their beat of metaphysics.

Cartesianism was a violent rupture. Bergsonism was a rupture, an unbinding that was brisk and as if relentless. There is certainly in Bergsonism a kind of relentlessness that there is not in Cartesianism. But that is because perhaps the rupture, the unbinding, that had to be worked in Bergsonism was still more threatened, more precarious, and on the other hand still more indispensable, than the one that had to be worked in Cartesianism. We are infinitely more bound to the slavery of the ready-made than we are bound to the slavery of disorder. The slavery of the ready-made is infinitely more ready to take us back than the slavery of disorder. And it has infinitely more disastrous consequences. In disorder itself there can be strokes of fortune, and even strokes of order. In what is tired there is no longer either grace or springing-forth. Of all that there can be of bad things, habit is the worst. Cartesianism climbed back up, drove back, only one habit, which was the habit of disorder. Bergsonism undertook to drive back all of habit as such, all of organic and mental habit.

And that in all the orders, in all the disciplines that we ranked at the beginning of this study.

Battles have been seen won in disorder itself and through disorder, panics forward. But fatigues and old ages have never been seen to give, by mistake, works of novelty.

There can be in disorder a certain fruitfulness. Habit and aging try in vain to play the young man.

That is what one calls a revolution: that great effort momentarily crowned. The man in his armchair who sees a revolution — were it even a mental revolution — and who says: That is no great feat — has himself said nothing. The question, in this order, is not whether it is a great feat. It is whether it has, at a certain moment of the history of the world, entered in. The greatest revolutions, in all the orders, have not been made with and by extraordinary ideas, and it is even the property of genius to proceed by the simplest ideas. Only, in ordinary times the simple ideas prowl like ghosts of a dream. When a simple idea takes body, there is a revolution. The Cartesian revolution consisted in stopping the descent, in climbing back up the habit of disorder. The Bergsonian revolution consisted in stopping the whole descent, in climbing back up all of organic and mental habit.

So it is in all the orders. What is most opposed to salvation itself is not sin, it is habit. Thousands of debtors mechanically repeat the dreadful words: Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Let a single one all at once, suddenly enlightened, take them seriously, those words, let them, like him, enter in — it is instantaneously the greatest revolution that there can presently be, for it is a revolution in the realm of money, it is a subversion of the realm of money. And it is one more man saved.

Everything is in the incorporation, in the incarceration, in the incarnation. And here again, and in this very thing, we are forced to speak the Bergsonian language, and in this matter no other will ever be spoken. Everything is in the insertion, and insertion is extremely rare. Of God, there has been only one incarnation, and even of ideas there are very few incorporations. When, instead of looking at an idea up in the air, all at once it is taken seriously — that is what is, and what makes, a revolution. And history counts only three or four of these great shakings.

Discourse on method for the right conduct of one’s reason and for seeking the truth in the sciences. Bergsonism too is a method for the right conduct of one’s reason. Bergsonism too has a reason. Bergsonism too is a party of reason. One does not see what a philosophy would be that was not a party of reason. Bergsonism even intends to serve reason still better, for it intends so to speak to serve it still more closely. Every philosophy is evidently and essentially a rationalism. Even a philosophy that was, or that wished to be, against reason, would still be rationalist. A philosophy can never bring anything but reasons. Cartesianism was, in its principle, an effort to lead reason to the search for truth in the sciences (but by sciences Descartes evidently meant a part of what we call metaphysics, and at least the metaphysics of the sciences). Bergsonism was, in its principle, an effort to lead reason to the embrace of reality. (In the sciences, in the metaphysics of the sciences, in metaphysics.) Already Platonism had been, in its principle, an effort to lead reason, by the ideal — or, if one will, the ideic — dialectic, to the very source of being. Bergsonism was an effort just as great, an effort of the same order, and I will say an effort in the same direction. There is no more a philosophy against reason than there is a battle against war, an art against beauty, a faith against God. Bergsonism was never either an irrationalism or an anti-rationalism. It was a new rationalism, and it is the coarse metaphysics that Bergsonism unbound (materialist metaphysics, medico-legal metaphysics, neuro-physiological metaphysics, sociological metaphysics, and so many others) that, being hardenings, scleroses, stiffenings, ankyloses, were literally deadenings of reason. All those metaphysics were sabotages, through hardness, of reason. They were splinters and eschars. Bergsonism is so little against reason that not only did it set the old articulations of reason playing again, but it set new articulations of it playing.

The famous rules of Bacon introduced into the history of the world no fruitfulness. We owe them rigorously nothing. Neither an invention, nor a discovery, nor a movement of thought. All those who, since the first stammerings of Greek thought, had made an invention, a discovery, a movement, had without thinking of it applied the rules of Bacon. All those before Bacon. But since Bacon, every man who should rise early in the morning with the firm resolve of applying the Baconian rules, and who should have only that firm resolve, who should set in play only that firm resolve, that man would not for all that make either an invention, or a discovery, or a movement of thought. And no one has ever seen an invention, a discovery, a movement of thought come out of the contemplation of the rules of Bacon. And there is a fine application, and not the least important, of the tables of presence, and of absence, and of concomitant variations.

If I were a great philosopher I should perhaps not have the right to tell the following story. All the more so since it is not a story, and since it is once again a soldier’s saying. But I am only a poor moralist. So, when there was one of them, in the 131st of the infantry, who worked himself too ostentatiously (at making a movement, at making a witticism), there was always another who said coldly: Above all, don’t forget to breathe. All those who have done something in the world are fellows who have not forgotten to breathe. But no one has ever done anything in the world solely because he had set himself to not forgetting to breathe.

Discourse on method for the right conduct — it is truly, it is literally a method for avoiding misconduct, bad conduct. And then, if one will, it is nothing, because people have always wanted to avoid misconduct in matters of thought; and if one will it is everything, because it is one of the three or four great shakings that have ever been produced in the history of thought. If one will, it is nothing, because it had always been a matter of avoiding misconduct in matters of thought. And if one will it is still less than nothing, because it was no more avoided after than before, and because Descartes avoided it no more than another (and it is in this sense that I said that Bergson is an infinitely better Bergsonian than Descartes is a good Cartesian). And yet, if one will, it is everything, because it is Cartesianism.

And again, in this discourse on method there is only one part, out of six — the second — that consists of rules of the method. In all, seven pages and a half. And in this second part itself there is only the heart, in all twenty lines, that consists of the rules of the method. It is these twenty lines that revolutionized the world and thought. Valmy too is a small battle, an artillery duel — I mean fought with small numbers, and not even fought at all, with almost no dead and wounded.

It is a prejudice, but it is absolutely ineradicable, which would have it that a rigid reason is more a reason than a supple reason; or rather which would have it that rigid reason is more reason than supple reason. It is a prejudice that has currency and that flourishes all along the line. It reigns, it is ineradicable, in all the disciplines that we ranked at the beginning of this note. It is the same prejudice that would have it that a rigid logic is more a logic than a supple logic. And that a rigid scientific method is more a method, and more scientific, than a supple scientific method. And above all that a rigid morality is more a morality, and more morality, than a supple morality. It is as if one said that the mathematics of the straight line are more mathematics than the mathematics of the curve.

It is evident, on the contrary, that it is the supple methods, the supple logics, the supple moralities that are the most severe, being the most tight-fitting. Rigid logics are infinitely less severe than supple logics, being infinitely less tight-fitting. Rigid moralities are infinitely less severe than supple moralities, being infinitely less tight-fitting. A rigid logic can let folds of error escape. A rigid method can let folds of ignorance escape. A rigid morality can let folds of sin escape, of which a supple morality, on the contrary, will fit closely, will denounce, will pursue the sinuous evasions. It is a supple logic, a supple method, a supple morality that pursues, that reaches, that traces the sinuosities of faults and of deficiencies. It is a supple morality that exhausts the sinuosities of failings. It is in a supple morality that everything appears, that everything is denounced, that everything is pursued. In a rigid compartmentalization there can be, with impunity, lacks, hollows, false folds. Rigidity is essentially unfaithful, and it is suppleness that is faithful. It is suppleness that denounces. Contrary to all that people believe, to all that is commonly taught, it is rigidity that cheats, it is rigidity that lies. And it is suppleness, not only that does not cheat, not only that does not lie, but that does not let anyone cheat and does not let anyone lie. Rigidity, on the contrary, permits everything, it signals nothing. In a modern trunk you can pile up all the linen veils of ancient supplication. If those veils make false folds inside the trunk, nothing of it shows on the lid.

Many misinterpretations that one sees spreading — or rather one global misinterpretation that one sees spreading — about Bergsonism, about the ancient and the modern, about the classical and the romantic, would fall away if people would only, once for all, declass the rigid from the firm and the hard. It is in rigid moralities that there can be niches — for dust, for microbes — moulds and hollows of rot, in corners in the rigidities, deposits, lees, and what our Latins called situs: a mould, a filth coming from immobility, from being left there. A filth from having been left there. And it is supple moralities, on the contrary, that demand a heart perpetually kept up to date. A heart perpetually pure. We have washed ourselves of such a bitterness. Just as it is the supple methods, the supple logics, that require a mind perpetually kept up to date, a mind perpetually pure. It is the supple moralities, and not the rigid moralities, that exercise the most implacably hard constraints. The only ones that never absent themselves. The only ones that do not forgive. It is the supple moralities, the supple methods, the supple logics that exercise the impeccable compulsions. That is why the most honest man is not the one who enters into apparent rules. It is the one who stays in his place, works, suffers, and is silent.