Thus man becomes the man of a country, of a group, of a craft, of a civilization, of a religion. But if we are to clothe ourselves in these higher beings we must begin by creating them within ourselves. The being of which we claim to form part is created within us not by words but only by acts. A being is not subject to the empire of language, but only to the empire of acts. Our Humanism neglected acts. Therefore it failed in its attempt.
The essential act possesses a name. Its name is sacrifice.
Sacrifice signifies neither amputation nor repentance. It is in essence an act. It is the gift of oneself to the being of which one forms part. Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart, A country--or a farm--is not the sum of its parts. It is the sum of its gifts.
So long as my civilization leant upon God it was able to preserve the notion of sacrifice whereby God is created in the hearts of men. Humanism neglected the essential role of sacrifice. It thought itself able to communicate the notion of Man by words and not by acts. In order to save the vision of Man present in all men, it could do no more than capitalize the word. And mankind was meanwhile moving down a dangerous slope--for we were in danger of mistaking the average of mankind or the arithmetical sum of mankind for Man. We were in danger of mistaking the sum of the stones for the cathedral. Wherefore little by little we lost our heritage.
Instead of affirming the rights of Man present in the individual we had begun to talk about the rights of the collectivity. We had bit by bit introduced a code for the collectivity which neglected the existence of Man. That code explains clearly why the individual should sacrifice himself for the community. It does not explain clearly and without ambiguity why the community should sacrifice itself for a single member. Why it is equitable that a thousand die to deliver a single man from unjust imprisonment. We still remember vaguely that this should be, but progressively we forget it more and more. And yet it is this principle alone which differentiates us from the ant-hill and which is the source of the grandeur of mankind. For want of an effective concept of humanity--which can rest only upon Man--we have been slipping gradually towards the ant-hill, whose definition is the mere sum of the individuals it contains.
What did we possess that we could set up against the religions of the State and of the Party? What had become of our great ideal of Man born of God? That ideal is scarcely recognizable now beneath the vocabulary of windy words that covers it.
Little by little forgetting man, we limited our code to the problems of the individual. We have gone on preaching the equality of men. But having forgotten Man, we no longer knew what it was we were preaching. Having forgotten in what men were equal, we enunciated a vague affirmation that was of no use to us. How can there be any material equality between individuals as such--the sage and the brute, the imbecile and the genius? On the material plane, equality implies that all men are identical and occupy the same place in the community; which is absurd. Wherefore the principle of equality degenerates and becomes the principle of identity.
We have gone on preaching the liberty of men. But having forgotten Man, we have defined our liberty as a sort of vague license limited only at the point where one man does injury to another. This seeming ideal is devoid of meaning, for in fact no man can act without involving other men. If I, being a soldier, mutilate myself, I am shot. An isolated individual does not exist. He who is sad, saddens others.
And even liberty of this sort had to be subjected to a thousand subterfuges before we could make use of it. We found it impossible to say when this right was valid and when it was not valid, and as we wanted very much to preserve the vague principle of the thing from the innumerable assaults which every society necessarily makes upon the liberty of the individual, we turned hypocrite and shut our eyes.
As for charity, we have not even dared go on preaching it. There was a time when the sacrifice which created beings took the name of charity each time that it honored God in His image upon earth. By our charity to the individual we made our gift to God, and later to Man. But having forgotten both God and Man, we found ourselves giving only to the individual. And from that moment charity became an unacceptable course. It is society and not the mood of the individual that should ensure equity in the sharing of the goods of this world. The dignity of the individual demands that he be not reduced to vassalage by the largesse of others. What a paradox--that men who possessed wealth should claim the right, over and above their possessions, to the gratitude of those who were without possessions!
But above all our miscomprehended charity turned against its own goal. It was founded exclusively upon feelings of pity with regard to individuals--wherefore it forbade us all educative chastisement. But true charity, being the practice of the rites rendered to Man over and above the individual, taught that the individual must be fought in order that Man grow great.
And thus Man became lost to us. And losing Man we emptied all warmth out of that very fraternity which our civilization had preached to us--since we are brothers in something, and not brothers in isolation. It is not by contributions to a pool that fraternity is ensured. Fraternity is the creation of sacrifice alone. It is the creation of the gift made to a thing greater than ourselves. But we, mistaking the very root of all true existence, seeing in it a sterile diminution of our goods, reduced our fraternity to no more than a mutual tolerance of one another.
We ceased to give. Obviously, if I insist upon giving only to myself, I shall receive nothing. I shall be building nothing of which I am to form part, and therefore I shall be nothing. And when, afterwards, you come to me and ask me to die for certain interests, I shall refuse to die. My own interest will command me to live. Where will I find that rush of love that will compensate my death? Men die for a home, not for walls and tables. Men die for a cathedral, not for stones. Men die for a people, not for a mob. Men die for love of Man--provided that Man is the keystone in the arch of their community. Men die only for that by which they live.
The sole reason why our society still seemed a fortunate one, and man seemed still to be distinguishable from the collectivity, was that our true civilization, which we were betraying in our ignorance, still sent forth its dying rays and still, despite ourselves, continued to preserve us.
How was it possible for our enemies to understand this when we ourselves no longer understood it? All that they could see in us was rocks strewn in a field. They sought in their way to lend meaning to the notion of collectivity--a notion we were no longer able to define because we had forgotten the existence of Man. Some of our enemies went straight and lightheartedly away to the most extreme conclusions of logic. Collectivity to them meant an absolute collection. Each stone was to be identical with every other stone. And each stone was to reign alone over itself. This was anarchy; and the anarchists, quite aware of the reverence due to Man, applied its principles rigorously to the individual. The contradictions that were born of that rigor were even greater than those that exist in our society.
Others collected the strewn stones and heaped them up in a field. They preached the rights of the Mass. The formula cannot satisfy; for if it is intolerable that a single man tyrannize a Mass, it is equally intolerable that the Mass oppress a single man.
Still others gathered together those powerless stones and out of their arithmetical sum they formed a State. And their state, too, fails to transcend the men who compose it, is too the mere expression of a sum. It stands for the power of the collectivity delegated into the hands of an individual. It is the reign of one stone--which claims to be identical with the rest--over a heap of stones. This State preaches a code of collective existence which once again we refuse to accept--but towards which, nevertheless, we are slowly moving for want of remembering Man who alone would justify our refusal.
The faithful of that new religion would object to several miners risking
their lives to save a single miner entombed, for in that case the rock pile would be injured. Let one of their wounded seem to be slowing down the advance of their army, and they will finish him off. The good of the community is a thing which they perceive in arithmetic--and it is arithmetic that governs them. They learn by their arithmetic that they would incur loss if they sought to transcend themselves and become greater than they are. Consequently they must hate those who differ from them--since they possess nothing higher than themselves with which to fuse. Every foreign way of life, every foreign race, every foreign system of thought is necessarily an affront to them. They have, no power to absorb others, for if we are to convert men to our way we cannot do it by amputating them but must do it by teaching them to express themselves, offering a goal to their aspirations and a territory for the deployment of their energies. To convert is always to set free. A cathedral is able to absorb its stones, which have no meaning but in it. The rock pile absorbs nothing; and for want of power to absorb, it can only crush. It is not astonishing that a rock pile, with its great weight, possesses more power than stones strewn in a Held.
And yet it is I who am the stronger.
I am the stronger provided that I am able to find myself. Provided our Humanism restores Man amongst us. Provided we are able to found our community, and, founding it, make use of the sole efficacious instrument--charity. For our community, as it was when our civilization built it, was no mere sum of interests: it was a sum of gifts.
I am the stronger because the tree is stronger than the materials of which it is composed. It drained those materials into itself. It transformed them into itself. The cathedral is more radiant than any heap of stones. I am the stronger because only my civilization possesses the power to bind into its unity all diversity without depriving any element of its individuality.
When I took off for Arras I asked to receive before giving. My demand was in vain. We must give before we can receive, and build before we may inhabit. By my gift of blood over Arras I created the love that I feel for my kind as the mother creates the breast by the gift of her milk. Therein resides the mystery. To create love, we must begin by sacrifice. Afterwards, love will demand further sacrifices and ensure us every victory. But it is we who must take the first step. We must be born before we can exist.
I came back from Arras, having woven my ties with my farmer's family. Through the translucent smile of his niece I saw the wheat of my village. Beyond my village I saw my country, and beyond my country all other countries. I came back to a civilization which had chosen Man as the keystone in its arch. I came back to Group 2-33--that Group that had volunteered to fight for Norway.
I dressed this day for the service of a god to whose being I was blind. Arras unsealed my eyes. Like the others of the Group, I am no longer blind. It may be that to-morrow Alias will order me to fly still another sortie. If, at dawn to-morrow, I fight again, I shall know finally why I fight.
My eyes have been unsealed, and I want now to remember what it is that they have seen. I feel the need of a simple Credo so that I may remember.
I believe in the primacy of Man above the individual and of the universal above the particular.
I believe that the cult of the universal exalts and heightens our particular riches, and founds the sole veritable order, which is the order of life. A tree is an object of order, despite the diversity of its roots and branches.
I believe that the cult of the particular is the cult of death, for it founds its order upon likeness. It mistakes identity of parts for unity of Being. It destroys the cathedral in order to line up the stones. Therefore I shall fight against all those who strive to impose a particular way of life upon other ways of life, a particular people upon other peoples, a particular race upon other races, a particular system of thought upon other systems of thought.
I believe that the primacy of Man founds the only equality and the only liberty that possess significance. I believe in the equality of the rights of Man inherent in every man. I believe that liberty signifies the ascension of Man. Equality is not identity. Liberty is not the exaltation of the individual against Man. I shall fight against all those who seek to subject the liberty of Man either to an individual or to the mass of individuals.
I believe that what my civilization calls charity is the sacrifice granted Man for the purpose of his own fulfillment. Charity is the gift made to Man present in the insignificance of the individual.
It creates Man. I shall fight against all those who, maintaining that my charity pays homage to mediocrity, would destroy Man and thus imprison the individual in an irredeemable mediocrity.
I shall fight for Man. Against Man's enemies--but against myself as well.
XXIV
We collected again at midnight to receive orders. Group 2-33 was sleepy. The flame in the fireplace had turned to embers. The Group seemed to be holding up still, but this was an illusion. Hochede was staring glumly at his precious watch. Penicot stood against a wall in a corner, his eyes shut. Gavoille, sitting on a table, his glance vacant and legs hanging, was pouting like a child about to cry. The doctor was nodding over a book. Alias alone was still alert, but frighteningly pale, papers before him under the lamplight, discussing something in a low voice with Geley. Discussion, indeed, gives you a false picture. The major was talking. Geley was nodding his head and saying, "Yes, of course." Geley was hanging on to that "Yes, of course" by main strength. He was clinging more and more eagerly to the major's discourse, like a half-drowned man to the neck of a swimmer. Had I been Alias I should have said without a change of voice, "Captain Geley, you are to be shot at dawn," and waited for the answer.
The Group had not slept for three nights. It stood like a house of cards.
The major got up, went across to Lacordaire, and pulled him out of a dream in which perhaps he was beating me at chess.
"Lacordaire! You take off at dawn. Ground-scraper sortie."
"Very good, Major."
"Better get some sleep."
"Yes, Major."
Lacordaire sat down again. The major went out, drawing Geley in his wake as if he were a dead fish on the end of a line. It was nearer a week than three days since Geley had been to bed. Like Alias, not only did he fly his sorties, but he carried part of the burden of responsibility for the Group. Human resistance has its limits: Geley seemed to have crossed his. Yet there they were, the swimmer and his burden, going off to the Staff for phantom orders.
Vezin, the skeptical Vezin, asleep on his feet, came teetering over to me like a somnambulist: "You asleep?"
"I ..."
I had been lying back in an armchair (for I had found an armchair) and was indeed dropping off. But Vezin's voice bothered me. What was it he had said? "Looks bad, old boy.... Categorically blocked.... Looks bad...."
"You asleep?"
"I.... No.... What looks bad?"
"The war," he said.
That was news, now! I started to drop off again and murmured vaguely, "What war?"
"What do you mean, 'What war'!"
This conversation wasn't going to get very far. Ah, Paula! Had air squadrons been issued with Tyrolian nursemaids we should have been put to bed long ago.
The major flung open the door and called out, "All set! We move out to-night!"
Behind him stood Geley, wide-awake. He would put off his "Yes, of course" until to-morrow night. Once again he would somehow find a reserve of strength in himself to help him with the wearying chores of our removal.
The Group got to its feet. The Group said, "Move again? Very good, sir." What else was there to say?
There was nothing to say. We should see to the removal. Lacordaire would stay behind and take off at dawn. If he got back he would meet us at our new base.
There would be nothing to say to-morrow, either. To-morrow, in the eyes of the bystanders, we would be the defeated. The defeated have no right to speak. No more right to speak than has the seed.
The End
About the Auth
or
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY, the "Winged Poet," was born in Lyon, France, in 1900. A pilot at twenty-six, he was a pioneer of commercial aviation and flew in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. His writings include The Little Prince, Wind, Sand and Stars, Night Flight, Southern Mail, and Airman's Odyssey. In 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission for his French air squadron, he disappeared over the Mediterranean.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey
(Series: # )
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