PYRRHUS AND CYNEAS
331
through the whole earth; we find the echo of it, for example,
in
a man
like Claude!; all things come from God; then all is good and man has
no need to tum away from the world; he even has great difficulty in
perverting this pre-destination within himself, for he is the creature of
God; it is difficult to err, since what is, is good. But an orthodox Christian
avoids going to the limits of such a thought: "Ah! Dear Madame," as
the greedy and worldly cleric said, sitting down at table, "would God
have invented all these good things if he had not wished us to eat them?"
But he carefully forgets that God invented woman also. There was an
old lady who refused with horror to put butter into her boiled egg. "I
eat it just as the good God made it," she declared, reaching for the salt.
"We will pray to God, with his whole works!" wrote Claude!. "He
does nothing in vain and nothing which might be harmful to our salva–
tion."
If
the works of God are wholly good, then they are entirely de–
signed for human salvation; they are not an end in themselves, but a
means which has its justification in our employment of it. But how then
are we to know if the melon was really created as a family dish? Perhaps
it may have been created in order not to be eaten; perhaps this world's
goods are only useful because man has the power to refuse them; just as
St. Francis of Assisi smiled upon the world without enjoying it. "For
everything you have nought but praise," said the archaeologist to the
Regent of Naples in Claudel's
Soulier de Satin.
"But it annoys me to see
that you don't use anything." However, the Regent gives him these
riches for which he has no use, and to give something is a way of using
it; asceticism is another form of enjoyment; whatever he may do man
makes use of worldly goods for it is through them that he achieves his
gain or loss. He must then decide what to do with them. His decision
will not be defined in the aim, because all use is superseding, and super–
seding does not exist anywhere; it is not, it has to be. What has it to be?
It has to be, says the Christian, in conformity with the will of God.
One must, then, renounce all naturalism, nothing being good but
virtue; evil is sin, and virtue submission to the divine requirements. So
God has requirements; he waits for man to tum to him. He has created
man that a being might exist who should not be premised but should
fulfil his being according
to
his creator's desire. The will of God appears
thus to be an appeal to man's liberty; it requires something which has
to come to be, which is not yet; it is a scheme, it is the transcending of
a being which has to become its being, which is not. An understanding
between God and man then is conceivable; in so far as God is not all
he has to be, man can establish him; he finds his place again in the world,
he is in his place by relationship to God; and that is how God appears
to be in relation to man. It is this which the German mystic Angelus
Silesius expressed when he wrote: "God has need of me, just as I of
Him." The Christian finds himself in the presence of a personal and
