PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
45
Not
at all: he made fun of doctors and what they had made out
Ji
medicine. Nor was he irritated by Aristotle, but by Aristotelianism.
Nor
by science, but by those men of learning of his day who, pro–
ceeding by syllogisms, lazily allowed a knowledge of formulas to
take the place of a direct observation of nature.
How many young Marxists today, sunk in the "dialectic", swear
by
Marx
as one used to swear by Aristotle! Their "culture" begins
and
ends with Marxism, which, they believe, permits them to under–
land everything, to judge everything. And everything which lies
outside the scope of Marxism or is contradictory to it, they declare
either
trivial or bad.
It
is
significant that certain pure Marxist theoreticians expect,
bope
for, and demand of society, and of the state, that which they
do
not even begin by achieving for themselves. For the Christian, the
RVolution occurs in himself. I wish I could say:
begins
in himself;
bat
most often that revolution suffices him; while for the Marxist
die
revolutiop outside himself is
en~h.
I should like to make these
two
efforts, these two effects complementary, and I think that often
6cir
opposition
is
rather factitious.
A constant need for reconciliation troubles me; it is a defect
fl
my
intelligence; it is perhaps a quality of my heart. I would
to
marry Heaven and Hell,
a
Ia Blake, to resolve contradictions,
to
see, generally speaking, only misunderstanding in the most
llrl~ctt1~e
and murderous oppositions. "Individualism and commu–
. . . how can you pretend to reconcile these two antagonists
within yourself?" my friend R. M. de G. laughingly said to me.
are water and fire." But from their marriage steam is born.
There
is
a tragic need to
hate,
which I feel everywhere now–
a need to set in opposition everything which should be un–
and completed and fertilized and united. The most in–
opposition. Only destruction is born of this fostering
*
*
*
One must beware of the illusion (for I believe it is an illusion)
lbe
last
years of life can be devoted to a more energetic search
With the progressive blunting of the senses, a sort of stupor
one's being; and, as the outside world loses its lustre and its
one's vigor fails; a certain dreary indifference takes pas–
of
the spirit, already pruned like those trees which the wood–
has
prepared for felling.
*
*
*
feel that one is an 'abnormal' person-I wept distractedly
I
first
made this discovery, but it was necessary to make the
