Читать книгу The Heart's Domain - Georges Duhamel - Страница 10

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You must understand that this concerns happiness and not pleasure, or well-being, or enjoyment, or the delight of the senses.

All cultivated people have created different words to designate these different things. All have committed their moralists to the task of preserving simple souls from a confusion which our instincts favor.

Delight of the senses, you who are the eternally unsatisfactory, is it true, intangible one, that you will always deceive us and that we shall always seek for happiness through you?

What seductiveness is not yours, O you who smile with the lips of love, O mysterious phantom of joy? How you lure us and enchain us! Well you know how to array yourself, at times, in the appearance of a sacred mission, a religious duty!

No, you are not happiness, divine though you are! To live without you is a bitter misfortune, but you are not happiness!

Why does happiness command us to sacrifice you often, to mistrust you always?

There is no happiness without harmony; you know this very well, you who are delicious disorder itself, death, laughter, strife.

Happiness is our homeland. You are only the burning country we long for, the tropical isle where our dreams exile themselves, never to return.

Happiness is our true kingdom. Delight of the senses, let your slaves hymn your praise.