CHAPTER II THE GREAT PREJUDICE.

CHAPTER II
"What means then, less deceptive than those
proposed by the philosophers and psychologists,
do you bring us, rash author, for classifying,
separating, defining, labelling human characters?"
None. And this for the reason that such a
means cannot exist. For
I THERE ARE No CHARACTERS
Listen to the admission which escapes from
the author of "Characters" himself:
"Men have no character, or, if they have, it
consists in having none which is constant, which
does not belie itself, and in which they are always
recognizable They have opposing
passions and contradictory failings; it is easier
for them to unite extremes than to have a conduct
one part of which springs naturally from
another."
What! All "unstable" to use the philosophic
jargon of the day, and to be rejected, as a natural
consequence, by the most celebrated contemporary
classifications !
"But," it is explained, "La Bruyere let this
cry escape but in a moment of discouragement;
does not his undertaking itself bear witness that
such was not his opinion?"
It bears eloquent witness, on the contrary, to
the sincerity and also the truth of this passage-
Amusingly and exclusively characteristic," his
figurines are not humanly complete. Compare,
if you doubt it, the too logical Onuphre with
Tartuffe, who contradicts himself so well! The
silhouettes of our moralist move too automatically;
we do not see their breasts heave with the
respiration of universal life. We cannot turn
one of them around without perceiving artifice.
The drawing of a character is made, necessarily,
from a fixed point, and the conception of it remains
relative. Sylla, to us a monster, shines in the
German histories, and Robespierre, before whom
our greybeards palpitate with admiration, appears
to the disciples of Taine but a vain and heartless
pawn. But let us take, from La Bruyere himself,
one of his portraits at random :
Irene repairs at great expense to Epidaurus,
sees Aesculapius in his temple and consults him
on her ills. First she complains that she is tired
and spent with fatigue, and the god declares that
this comes from the length of the journey she
has made ; she says that in the evening she has no
appetite, the oracle orders that she dine lightly;
she adds that she is subject to insomnia, and he
advises her not to remain in bed except during
the night; she asks him why she feels dull, and
what is the remedy, the oracle replies that she
should rise before noon and should occasionally
walk; she tells him wine disagrees with her, he
tells her to drink water; that she has indigestion,
he advises her to diet; "my sight is failing,"
says Irene, "use glasses" says Aesculapius;
"I myself am failing" she continues, "I am neither
so strong nor so healthy as I was," - "that"
says the god, "is because you are growing older."
"But how can this languor be cured?" "The
shortest way, Irene, is to die, as your mother and
grandmother have done." "Son of Apollo," cries
Irene, "what counsel are you giving me? Is this
all of that science which men proclaim, and which
makes you revered the world over? What are
you telling me which is rare or mysterious? Did
I not already know all these remedies you are
recommending?" "Why, then, did you not use
them," replies the god, "without coming so far
to see me, and shortening your days by the fatigue
of a long journey?"
Most malicious, but most exact as a portrait,
and most particular, is it not? Are not all the
character's little weaknesses presented completely
as complacently? It is Madame de Montespan
who is the subject.
At this name there come to mind other "characters"
which might as legitimately be drawn
from her; the extravagantly ambitious, the
intemperate of speech, so ready with insult, the
devotee of black masses, etc.
No, the character does not exist any more than
an exact portrait exists in painting. So many
painters, so many colors, so many expressions, so
many lines, even in each feature of the model!
While as to photography, it is as has been
scientifically demonstrated to those aberrants who
do not see it with their own eyes the worst of
lies.
And if "there are no characters" it follows
naturally that
II THE SELF DOES Nor EXIST
The self is but a formidable suggestion. The
child is taught this false idea in exactly the same
way in which a dog is taught to answer to a name,
or, what comes to the same thing, to a certain
whistle or blow of the whip, even to the point
of responding to it by the most dangerous and
painful feats. This blow of the whip imperative
and categorical or its acoustic imitation,
the whistle or call to a slave, has later been modified
for each of us in a particular fashion, and one
so much the more personally menacing, in the
Name, that corner-stone, if I may now change
the image, of the "I." The Name, first of the
orders which the poor human being receives, will
be the source of all the others, and the Name will
dominate our whole existence.
At bottom, we so well feel the artificial origin
of the "self" that we admit a most strange hypothesis,
namely that this "self," supposedly the
essential, does not exist, so to speak, before the
cabalistic age of seven years. Until then, parents
and strangers agree in considering the "conscience,"
the "personality" of the child so feeble,
so vague that his acts remain almost altogether
"innocent." This "conscience," soon to be so
responsible before the law, and even if not in
theory, at least in the practice of daily life, quite
as much so before the so-called determinist
philosophy, this "conscience," this "self," this
"individual" does not undertake his complete
and this time overwhelming responsibility until
the age, not less cabalistic, of three times seven
years, an age at which he is invited by society,
more imperiously from century to century, to
the operations of military murder, of voting and
of legal reproduction.
Nevertheless, if the "self" is a "conscious personality,"
and rests on the "memory," it will be
necessary to admit, for each one of us, at least
several "selves," successive and totally independent
of one another. Already the "self" of
the twelfth year has forgotten that of the second
year, and how few things has the adult retained
in memory, compared to the immense forgetfulness
of the self, emotional and reasoning, almost
entirely effaced, of the twelfth year? A few episodes,
external and distorted, are all that remain
to us.
If the memory alone connects, in our intimate
consciousness, these "selves" so little like to one
another, it is by how slender a thread! Many
such threads break in silence daily; the greater
part of those which subsist remain throughout
the course of life buried in shadows in our vast
Unconscious; a few, a very few, will, if we live
long enough, come again to light perhaps a single
time, only to disappear again forever.
What were you doing at this hour, on this day
of the month, in the year 1895? Or two months
later in the following year, at three o'clock in
the afternoon?
Externally, on the contrary, a strict "responsibility"
chains one to another, like so many galleyslaves,
all those successive "selves," in such a
manner that each of them exhausts itself carrying
the weight of acts the greater part of which
are completely effaced from the memory, and
others of which appear but as the phantoms of
inexplicable legends.
So, through idolatry of Nature and her terrible
enchainments, do we superstitiously hold the
unity of the Self that chimera preferable to
all charitable justice, to our happiness and even
to hope!
And now, it appears, not only this unity (sprung,
I believe, from the brain of some unlucky arithmetician),
but even the "I" has no existence!
So many individuals mingle in the multiple
personality, so many strangers are entering and
departing by all the ceaselessly swinging doors,
that it can no longer constitute a "social entity"
nor a durable "moral creature."
There are Selves which, the greater part of the
time, let us acknowledge, hold all the scene with
their uninterrupted march, dictating, disposing,
acting on the way, and disappearing in the crowd
without, which continues to launch toward that
within its monotonous signals. Strange, it is
none the less this incoherent march, these pressures
of crowds unknown to one another and
without tradition, which the philosopher proclaims
an irreducible unity, in order to brandish
it in his exalted imagination with such pride that
he opposes it, quite alone, to the non-self schematized
on the other hand. After which, our
philosopher goes to bed, and as for his "self,"
does he even know whether or not he takes it
with him, or in what place it hides among the
chaos of his dreams?
"There are two men in me!" In vain we recall
this dreadful plaint which for three thousand
years has come from humanity. In vain we
show that only the existence of these "two men"
is necessary to cause the fall of the systems, to
shake tribunals amid their parody; in vain we
detect the most energetic and single-minded
individual accomplishing acts in direct contradiction
of the unique Self acknowledged by him;
he will stoop to lying, to playing the hypocrite,
in order to maintain his idol upon its altar. And
the most sincere and the most cynical of us do
the same. In despite of truth, of justice, of
charity, this dogma of the single Self imposes
itself upon us. To it the freest among us sacrifices
docilely his sincerity; worse yet, to this
fundamental and diabolic talsehood we sacrifice
obstinately the genius which each of us, with his
complete humanity, possesses.
For this falsehood of the single Self, of the
Character, the Identity, with its bondage and
responsibility, alone assures the social state. And
so much the worse for you if your "self" alternates
inexhaustibly between passion and judgment,
making impossible for you the self-examination
so much recommended! So much the worse
if, precisely because one of your "selves" has
said "white," the other should declare "black!"
So much the worse if you do not know why at
certain moments you hate the woman you love
best, and that from the bottom of your heart
your single heart! So much the worse if you
deny every faith you hold, if you profane every
virtue you possess! Of what importance to us
are these puzzling trifles, of which your soul
perishes? Falsify with us; we must, above all,
in piling up the Systems and their complementary
hypocrisies, maintain boldly the unity of the Self.
But you do not find, you say, the same "self"
at home and upon the rostrum, with your friend
or your wife, before your janitor or with the
mistress with whom you divest yourself of your
"unity" so respectable and burdensome, in the
presence of your superiors, or in solitude, or
amid honors. ... If you are discovered
contradicting yourself, you will declare that this
time you were shamming, belying yourself, but
previously
Ah, if the human ego were one and unique,
between whom then and whom, pray, would the
struggles of conscience take place? What grotesque
picture do you show me of a tribunal
wherein the judge is alone and bounces from
bench to bar, from side to side of the court?
Would not one who, entering, observed such a
spectacle, conclude with reason that the judge
was a lunatic? You, nevertheless, are no lunatic;
it must be, then, that your Self is not one, but
several.
The Self, full of illusions and of pride, which
was so enterprising, was it not sincere? What a
contrast to its successor, who, with courage
broken, comes to bear witness sadly against it!
Should you not henceforth abide by the experiences
and declarations of this latter? But no,
you cannot, on pain of perishing quickly with it;
you can no more do so than you can begin life
over. . . Each mistress who has loved you
loved but one of your "selves," which differed
from the others to such a degree as not to recognize
any of those who had previously loved you,
and the deep motive which puts a weapon in the
hand of the jealous is her failure to find in the
body of the deceiver the being she has loved;
she desires to avenge his destruction upon the
usurper! What do I say? Perhaps upon the
same day, at an hour's interval, the wife and the
mistress embrace in you two men, sometimes
two really sincere, forgetful of one another, or
perhaps even averting their eyes in the embarrassment
(admit it, unlucky one!) of not comprehending
one another. Where then is your unique
ego, where is your true character? Say no more;
invent no further falsehoods !
Ill A LITTLE COMMENTARY ON
"THE IMITATION OF CHRIST"
Thus the "character," which some go so far
as to call the "self," is, in the dissolution thereof,
revealed as that which both the one and the other
are, AN APPEARANCE.
This negative value of the "I" or individual
character illuminates with a strong light the
Christian doctrine, less and less understood, of
humility ("But when thou art bidden, go and sit
down in the LOWEST room." Luke XIV, 10)
and of the obedience which logically results from
it. ("It is a great matter to live in obedience,
to be under a hcg diet superior, and not to be at our own
disposing . . go whither thou wilt, thou shalt
find no rest but in humble subjection." IMITATION
OF CHRIST, I, 9).
"The highest and most profitable learning is
the true knowledge and consideration of our
selves. It is great wisdom and perfection to
esteem nothing of ourselves." (I, 2). To humble
oneself, in short, to obey, to deny and abase
oneself, this is to destroy and overwhelm that
negation, that mutilation which is the Self or
so-called character, and let spring in its place
the suppressed organs of the complete human
being, the true image of God, as GENESIS says,
and consequently of Jesus Christ. And the
pious author cries to God, before that lacuna,
that nonentity which is literally the self: "Thou
accomplishest all things, Thou fillest all things,
only the sinner Thou leavest empty!" (Ill, 3);
then, turning toward us: "Of thyself thou always
tendest to nothing." (Ill, 4). Do we understand,
now, why "where heavenly grace enter in,
and true charity, there will be no place for selflove."
(111,9)?
"But," it will be asked, "why put ones own Self,
low as it may be, still lower than the other human
selves which humble it?" They do not humble
it nor make it suffer, for by themselves they
can do nothing. Humiliations, torments, it is
from God alone that we receive all these things,
Whose instruments they are; from His hand, of
which they are the members. "The truly patient
man minds not by whom he is exercised, whether
by his superiors, by one of his equals, or by an
inferior; whether by a good and holy man or by
one that is perverse and unworthy. But indifferently
from every creature, how much soever
or how often soever anything adverse befalls
him, he takes it all thankfully as from the hand
of God, and esteems it a GREAT GAIN." (Ill, 19.)
And he will confess "I cannot say that any creature
hath ever done me wrong." (Ill, 41.) The
other "selves," the other characters, like our
own, being in fact but appearances.
# * # # *
The "character" is but the impression upon
others (who reflect it back to us and convince us
of it) produced by one or several of our actions,
undertakings, intentions divined or assumed,
apologies, theories, etc., manifested once for
all or repeated in various analogous forms.
In reality, then, we find nothing solid, at the
bottom of this conception, but the idea of action.
And the present study might have taken as epigraph
that affirmation which was thought premature
in THE THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS:
"Characters ARE what they DO."
Now, if action, taken abstractly, may be defined
by us as the shock of two forces, the conflict of
two beings, it consists to consider it by halves,
that is to say each of these two beings in an
impulse, in an act, in a simple movement. This,
in turn, is but the passage from one attitude to
another. . . All is thus reduced, in the end.
not to Characters in themselves, but to Attitudes,