Most likely,
when I reach the stage of refining the expression, I shall have nothing
to say, and so remain silent.
SENSIBILITY
In my books, as in most that are modern, there is an indefinable
resentment against life and against society.
Resentment against life is of far more ancient standing than resentment
against society.
The former has always been a commonplace among philosophers.
Life is absurd, life is difficult of direction, life is a disease, the
better part of the philosophers have told us.
When man turned his animosity against society, it became the fashion to
exalt life. Life is good; man, naturally, is magnanimous, it was said.
Society has made him bad.
I am convinced that life is neither good nor bad; it is like Nature,
necessary. And society is neither good nor bad. It is bad for the man
who is endowed with a sensibility which is excessive for his age; it is
good for a man who finds himself in harmony with his surroundings.
A negro will walk naked through a forest in which every drop of water is
impregnated with millions of paludal germs, which teems with insects,
the bites of which produce malignant abcesses, and where the temperature
reaches fifty degrees Centigrade in the shade.
A European, accustomed to the sheltered life of the city, when brought
face to face with such a tropical climate, without means of protection,
would die.
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