Читать книгу The Heart's Domain - Georges Duhamel - Страница 23

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Every philosophy has given magnificent expression to these immortal truths. What can we add to the words of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius, of Christ in regard to the vanity of those riches which alone society admits to be of value?

But the poets have said to us, “Do not abandon the world, for it abounds in pure and truly divine joys that will be lost if you do not harvest them!”

The road that ought to be sweet for us to follow crosses now that of the Christians, now that of the Stoics. We may stop now at the Garden of Olives, now at the threshold of that small house without a door, without furnishings, where the master of Arrien used to live.

Our road will lead us even more often through wild, solitary places, or to the pillow of some man who sleeps in the earth, or to the smiling dwelling of some humble friend, or again into the melodious shadow where the souls of Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach forever dwell.

We shall not struggle with the mass of deluded man to possess the known, so long as the unknown remains without a master. We shall give up crude material possession in order to dream all the better of spiritual possession.

No, we cannot any longer renounce our kingdom when it calls to us, when for us it sings, hosanna!

And those of us who already have their place in the kingdom of heaven must not hesitate to demand their share of this world also; for the world has been given to all men so that each man, with the help of all the rest, may possess the whole of it.