We give the faults of other civilizations as a proof of the inadequacy of the religions on which they depend. Yet if we look at the record of Europe for the last twenty centuries we have no difficulty in finding faults which are at least equivalent to theirs. The destruction of America by massacre and of Africa by slavery, the massacres in the South of France—surely these things are no better than the homosexuality in Greece or the orgiastic rites of the Orient. But it is said that in Europe the blemishes existed in spite of the perfection of Christianity and that in the other civilizations they existed because of the imperfection of religion.
An outstanding example, to be carefully pondered, of the technique of error—setting aside. In estimating the value of India or Greece, we compare the good with the evil. In estimating the value of Christianity, we set the evil aside.1
1 Simone Weil here illustrates a profound truth by a somewhat ill-chosen example. When a Christian (an Inquisitor for instance) behaves with cruelty it is quite permissible to say that he is acting in such a way in spite of his religion,
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We set things aside without knowing we are doing so; that is precisely where the danger lies. Or, which is still worse, we set them aside by an act of the will, but by an act of the will that is furtive in relation to ourselves. Afterwards we do not any longer know that we have set anything aside. We do not want to know it, and, by dint of not wanting to know it, we reach the point of not being able to know it.
This faculty of setting things aside opens the door to every sort of crime. Outside those departments where education and training have forged solid links, it provides a key to absolute licence. That is what makes it possible for men to behave in such an incoherent fashion, particularly wherever the social, collective emotions play a part (war, national or class hatreds, patriotism for a party or a church). Whatever is surrounded with the prestige of the social element is set in a different place from other things and is exempt from certain connexions.
We also make use of this key when we give way to the allurements of pleasure.
I use it when, day after day, I put off the fulfilment of some obligation. I separate the obligation and the passage of time.
There is nothing more desirable than to get rid of this key. It should be thrown to the bottom of a well whence it can never again be recovered.
The ring of Gyges who has become invisible—this is precisely the act of setting aside: setting oneself aside from the crime one commits; not establishing the connexion between the two.
The act of throwing away the key, of throwing away the ring of Gyges—this is the effort proper to the will. It is the act by which, in pain and blindness, we make our way out of the cave.
Gyges: ‘I have become king, and the other king has been since his religion enjoins charity above all things. When, however, a Nazi acts in the same way it is allowable to attribute his conduct (at least in part) to his doctrine, since his doctrine permits it.
[Editor’s note.]
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assassinated.’ No connexion whatever between these two things.
There we have the ring!
The owner of a factory: ‘I enjoy this and that expensive luxury and my workmen are miserably poor.’ He may be very sincerely sorry for his workmen and yet not form the connexion.
For no connexion is formed if thought does not bring it about. Two and two remain indefinitely as two and two unless thought adds them together to make them into four.
We hate the people who try to make us form the connexions we do not want to form.
Justice consists of establishing between analogous things connexions identical with those between similar terms, even when some of these things concern us personally and are an object of attachment for us.
This virtue is situated at the point of contact of the natural and the supernatural. It belongs to the realm of the will and of clear understanding, hence it is part of the cave (for our clarity is a twilight), but we cannot hold on to it unless we pass into the light.
MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE1
We are a part which has to imitate the whole.
The a¯tman. Let the soul of a man take the whole universe for its body. Let its relation to the whole universe be like that of a collector to his collection, or of one of the soldiers who died crying out ‘Long live the Emperor!’ to Napoleon. The soul transports itself outside the actual body into something else. Let it therefore transport itself into the whole universe.
We should identify ourselves with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subject to suffering.
Even though I die, the universe continues. That does not console me if I am anything other than the universe. If, however, the 1 The identification of the soul with the universe has no connexion here with pantheism. One can only fully accept the blind necessity which rules the universe by holding closely through love to the God who transcends the universe.
Cf. above: ‘This world, in so far as it is quite empty of God, is God himself.’
[Editor’s a note.]
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universe is, as it were, another body to my soul, my death ceases to have any more importance for me than that of a stranger. The same is true of my sufferings.
Let the whole universe be for me, in relation to my body, what the stick of a blind man is in relation to his hand. His sensibility is really no longer in his hand but at the end of the stick. An apprenticeship is necessary.
To limit one’s love to the pure object is the same thing as to extend it to the whole universe.
To change the relationship between ourselves and the world in the same way as, through apprenticeship, the workman changes the relationship between himself and the tool. Getting hurt: this is the trade entering into the body. May all suffering make the universe enter into the body.
Habit, skill: a transference of the consciousness into an object other than the body itself.
May this object be the universe, the seasons, the sun, the stars.
The relationship between the body and the tool changes during apprenticeship. We have to change the relationship between our body and the world.
We do not become detached, we change our attachment. We
must attach ourselves to the all.
We have to feel the universe through each sensation. What does it matter then whether it be pleasure or pain? If our hand is shaken by a beloved friend when we meet again after a long separation, what does it matter that he squeezes it hard and hurts us?
There is a degree of pain on reaching which we lose the world. But afterwards peace comes. And if the paroxysm returns, so does the peace which follows it. If we realize this, that very degree of pain turns into an expectation of peace, and as a result does not break our contact with the world.
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Two tendencies with opposite extremes: to destroy the self for the sake of the universe, or to destroy the universe for the sake of the self. He who has not been able to become nothing runs the risk of reaching a moment when everything other than himself ceases to exist.
External necessity or an inner need as imperative as that of breathing. ‘Let us become the central breath.’ Even if a pain in our chest makes respiration extremely painful, we still breathe, we cannot help it.
We have to associate the rhythm of the life of the body with that of the world, to feel this association constantly and to feel also the perpetual exchange of matter by which the human being bathes in the world.
Things which nothing can take from a human being as long as he lives: in the way of movement over which his will has a hold, respiration; in the way of perception, space (even in a dungeon, even with our eyes blinded and our ear-drums pierced, as long as we live we are aware of space).
We have to attach to these things the thoughts which we desire that no circumstances should be able to deprive us of.
To love our neighbour as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all the modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.
Not to accept an event in the world is to wish that the world did not exist. That is within my power—for myself. If I wish it I obtain it. I am then an excrescence produced by the world.
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Wishes in folklore: what makes wishes dangerous is the fact that they are granted.
To wish that the world did not exist is to wish that I, just as I am, may be everything.
Would that the entire universe, from this pebble at my feet to the most distant stars, existed for me at every moment as much as Agnès did for Arnolphe or his money-box did for Harpagon.
If I choose, the world can belong to me like the treasure does to the miser.
But it is a treasure that does not increase.
This irreducible ‘I’ which is the irreducible basis of my suffering—I have to make this ‘I’ universal.
What does it matter that there should never be joy in me since there is perfect joy perpetually in God! And the same is true with regard to beauty, intelligence and all things.
To desire one’s salvation is wrong, not because it is selfish (it is not in man’s power to be selfish), but because it is an orientation of the soul towards a merely particular and contingent possibility instead of towards a completeness of being, instead of towards the good which exists unconditionally.
All that I wish for exists, or has existed, or will exist somewhere.
For I am incapable of complete invention. In that case how should I not be satisfied?
Br … I could not prevent myself from imagining him living, imagining his house as a possible place for me to listen to his delightful conversation. Thus the consciousness of the fact of his death made a frightful desert. Cold with metallic coldness. What did it matter to me that there were other people to love? The love
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that I directed towards him, together with the outlines shaping in my mind of exchanges of ideas which could take place with no one else, were without an object. Now I no longer imagine him as alive and his death has ceased to be intolerable for me. The memory of him is sweet to me. But there are others whom I did not know then and whose death would affect me in the same way.
D … is not dead, but the friendship that I bore him is dead, and a like sorrow goes with it. He is no more than a shadow.
But I cannot imagine the same transformation for X …, Y …, Z …, who, nevertheless, so short a time ago did not exist in my consciousness.
Just as parents find it impossible to realize that three years ago their child was non-existent, I find it impossible to realize that I have not always known the beings I love.
I think I must love wrongly: otherwise things would not seem like this to me. My love would not be attached to a few beings. It would be extended to everything which is worthy of love.
‘Be ye perfect even as your Father who is in heaven… .’ Love in the same way as the sun gives light. Love has to be brought back to ourselves in order that it may be shed on all things. God alone loves all things and he only loves himself.
To love in God is far more difficult than we think.
I can taint the whole universe with my wretchedness without feeling it or collecting it together within myself.
We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact.
It is better to say ‘I am suffering’ than ‘this landscape is ugly’.
We must not want to change our own weight in the balance of the world—the golden balance of Zeus.
The whole cow gives milk although the milk is only drawn from the udder. In the same way the world is the producer of saintliness.