,
.
Pyrrhus and Cyneas*
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
nG
GOD
on
WILLS IT."
This motto shielded the Crusaders from Cyneas'
questions. The conquests of the Christian warriors were not, like those
of Pyrrhus, an unprofitable excursion, if God willed them. The will of
God cannot be surpassed; in him man finds the ultimate goal of his
efforts, since beyond him there is nothing. The necessity of the divine
being reflects upon those actions which have their end in him and redeems
them for eternity. But what does God will?
If
God is infinity and plenitude of being, in him there is no interval
between the project and its realization. What he wills is; what
is,
he wills.
His will is but the immovable creation of being; as yet it can scarcely be
called will. Such a God is not an individual; he is the universal, the all,
the firm, the eternal. And the universal is silence. He asks no return, he
makes no promises, he demands no sacrifice, he dispenses neither rewards
nor punishments, he can justify nothing and condemn nothing; on him
neither optimism nor despair may be set; he is: beyond that nothing can
be said about it. The perfection of his being leaves no room for man.
To transcend oneself in an object, is tq establish it; but how establish
that which already
is?
Man could not transcend himself in God,
if
God
is premised as wholly complete. Man then is only an accident immaterial
to the surface of being; on the earth he is like the explorer lost in the
desert; he may go to right or left, or where he desires, he will never
arrive anywhere and the sand will cover all trace of him.
If
he
wi~hes
to give direction to his actions he should not address this indifferent,
impersonal God; his motto should be that on the pediment of the abbey
at Thelema: "Do what thou wilt."
If
God wills all that is, man has but
to act, no matter how. As the heretic Amalrician sect said, in the twelfth
century: "When one is in God's hand, one has no care for what one has
to do, one has no remorse for what one has done." And they passed their
lives in joyful dissipation.
The church burnt the Amalricians with great ceremony. Nevertheless
there exists a Catholic naturalism which extends the blessing of God
*
The following selections are from the existentialist essay by that title.
