EVERY so often we are called upon to decide just what political or social or ethical “platform” is the one that comes closest to the truth and to the public need and which, accordingly, is entitled to our confidence and our support. And these are moments of anguish for us. No matter how persuasive a given programme may seem, we are filled with a fear, which gradually becomes a conviction, that in the end its triumph and application will do more harm than good.

“Free Trade,” we may say. “Hands off! Give us a chance to breathe! Let’s turn the individual loose for a time, build up business and concentrate economic power!” But, are we not likely, in the mad race that results, to lose sight of other noble and very important needs—peace, for instance, modest, frugal living, the time and the quiet necessary for the inner life?

So then, a check on the individual, stability rather than flux; State Socialism, or unionism, or communism! But are we not likely, in this case, to cramp or stifle individual initiative, to weaken the combative instincts of competition and struggle? These alone are the forces that save us from degeneracy and make men of us. They alone are the forces that give meaning and value to life. They alone lead to the creation of higher and higher forms of life, composing through the centuries the epic of humanity, sung with incessant fervour and with increasing inspiration by generation after generation of bards and men.

Careful, therefore! Conservatism! Respect for the past, the sacred past that binds us to the traditions of the forefathers! But are we not in danger then of keeping artificially alive something that is really dead—of cultivating empty forms?

So—progressivism and radicalism! Let us be rid of the dead past! Let us fight for rationality, regularity, equality, justice! But in the new, modern and freshly painted house we try to build in this way, are we going to feel as much at home as we did before? Shall we not miss the sheltered corner by the old fireplace, so cosy and so rich in memories? Will not things seem lifeless and barren and without purpose?

And here is a programme for increasing the population! Heavens! Haven’t we enough unemployed as it is? And if we add to our poverty, shall we not fall prey to wealthier and better constituted nations? No, we must have birth control! And see our armies crippled in times of war?

To tell the truth, if some Divinity could give us full power to execute any one of such programmes as seem to us likely, over a long or a short period of time, to serve the best interests of humanity, we would hesitate to accept the responsibility. We would perceive all the dangers involved in the very things we held desirable, and we would end by handing back to God a power that it is His place, rather than ours, to exercise. And indeed it is His task and not ours: that is to say, it is the task of History which brings things to pass, as it has always brought things to pass, not through the efforts of separate individuals, setting out to do these or those particular things, but as a resultant of the combined and conflicting and clashing efforts of all individuals. What, then, are we to do as citizens, as men? Just what we actually do, just what all men who are really practical and efficient do. Men of achievement do not set programmes for history after the manner of theorists (or rather of bad theorists and incompetent executives). They do have in their heads something resembling a rational programme, in which, more or less ingenuously, they profess belief. But when it comes to action (political action, especially), they are just themselves: they obey themselves, they express themselves, they realise themselves. But this Self that each expresses—is it an arbitrary creation, or an arbitrary choice, of his own? Is it not a necessity of the Spirit—of the actual situation in history in which we each find ourselves? And is this necessity not attested by one of our deeper instincts, by the voice of conscience? Some people feel that they are “called” or destined to certain functions in society: they are born conservatives, or revolutionaries, or Free Traders, or protectionists; just as some are born savers and others are born spendthrifts, or as some are born fanatics, while others are born to tolerance—traits which—also according to circumstances—vary with ups and downs. It often happens, doubtless, that each of us gives an absolute value to the “platforms” he professes and to the policies he approves. But such illusions—they are useful within certain limits—would soon be exploded if we put them to the test suggested above, assuming that absolute power for applying them were given us by a God. For we should at once become aware that the work we strive to do is explained and justified by the differing and conflicting work that others are doing and amid which and against which our own work is done. In fact, if everybody began to do what we are doing, our work would either cease or else swing over to an opposite character.

Misfortunes and sorrows have a value for us because they educate. But they come upon us of their own accord and despite our precautions. We should be mad indeed to go looking for them or to advise others to go looking for them. What we should recommend instead (because it has a bearing upon the active attitude toward life) is service of the Lord in joyfulness of heart; and joy is found in action in accord with our being—a doing that is the real exercise of our freedom. Platforms and programmes, taken as substitutes for individual initiative and originality, are harmful in two ways. In the first place, they fail, as has been suggested, to win our full confidence. In the second place, if they are at times poetic duplicates of our personalities, if they seem to strengthen us in our day’s work, they stand at other times, when taken literally and objectively, in opposition to our temperaments and personalities, and impel us to futile outreachings toward unattainable goals.

Is it necessary to add as a caution that the personality we are to express is our moral personality? That the individuality in question here is the individuality of the specific situation in history and of the specific mission that devolves upon each of us from that situation? That selfishness and egotism, which halo themselves in a deranged and befuddled worship of self, are nothing but decadent perversions or natural exaggerations of a legitimate revolt against abstract ideals? And I recommended joyful service of the Lord, rather than joyful service of the Devil, because the Devil has never been famous as a source of joy. Sei du! Sei du! “Be thyself—thyself!” writes a modern German poet named Dehmel, in the refrain of one of his poems addressed to his own son. But the word “you” has a twofold meaning—like the word “I,” of which, in this case, it is a synonym.