Every attack of a moral nature is, first of all, a testimony of vanity. Those who attack consider themselves morally superior to those who are attacked. But when executed en masse, not only does vanity manifest itself, but cowardice and, who knows, certain sadism, natural to the members of the noble species when unable to control their most perverse impulses. Of these, what is expected of a hyena is expected: a smile of scorn and blood running down their teeth.
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I would be infinitely happier if I were a tree. I correct: a stone—today trees are embraced…—Stones do not listen, they are not bothered, they are not asked, they do not pay taxes and, that is exactly the word, they live in peace. If not as components of the landscape, they are invisible. And who can tell the limits of their inner universe? The incapacity to listen—I presume; because if they listen, they never react…—is something really enviable and superior. The weak human mind, so vulnerable to terrible disturbances coming from noise, which submit it and silence it in extreme ease, has only to envy the placidity of the life of this noble rocky being…
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The word “study,” in common sense, refers to acquiring training for the performance of a professional function. The “study,” if taken as the search for the answer to questions of a personal, existential nature or as the mere investigation of existence, is no longer “study,” but a hobby. That is to say: if not destined to a practical purpose, the effort is less noble, dispensable. That, of course, is what the pragmatism of these days thinks, the pragmatism that dimensions its own old sagacity agonizing on a hospital bed.
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Dignity: insubmission to destiny; complete refusal to play a social role; reaction contrary to instincts; freedom, even in privation and pain; ability to choose and take responsibility for one’s own acts; resilience to fortune; effort, even if useless; respect by one’s own conscience.
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