Autor: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert)

Buch: The Intellectual Life

Titel: The Intellectual Life

Stichwort: Kreative Arbeit; Schreiben 2; Zurückgezogenheit; Wahrheit - Erfolg, Ehrgeiz, Öffentlichkeit; Bestätigung von Gott; "intellektuelle" Zirkel: Konventionen, nicht Wahrheit;

Kurzinhalt: Detachment from Self and the World ... The essential thing is not the reception accorded to our words, but the reception that we ourselves have given to truth ... what is less eternal than an ambitious aim?

Textausschnitt: 21/8 Style, and speaking more generally, all creative work require detachment. Our obsessing personality must be put aside, the world must be forgotten. When one is thinking of truth, can one allow one's attention to be turned from it by self? What is to be expected of the man who stops short at self? I hope in the man who goes straight forward, beyond his ephemeral personality, towards the immense and the eternal-in the astronomer walking in the company of the stars; in the poet or philosopher or theologian plunged in the study of animate or inanimate matter, of man individual and social, of souls, of angels, and of God. I believe in such a one because the spirit of truth dwells in him, not some wretched preoccupation with self. (209; Fs)

We have seen that it is not enough to work with the intelligence alone: the whole man is necessary. But the man who engages in the work must not be the creature of passion, vanity, ambition, or vain desire to please. (209; Fs) (notabene)

22/8 Everyone is passionate at times, but passion must at no moment get the upper hand. Everyone is inclined to vanity, but it is a vice if the work itself at bottom is vanity. The important thing is not what we shall get out of knowledge, but what we can give to it. The essential thing is not the reception accorded to our words, but the reception that we ourselves have given to truth, and that we are disposing others to give to it. Of what weight, in view of that sacred purpose, are our petty selfish calculations? Many men who appear to be heartily intent on some work care less for it than for trifling successes. The formation of worlds, the ascent of species, the history of man in society, the economy of labor, serve to get them a purple or red ribbon; their poetry aims at nothing higher than to attract a following of admiring disciples; their pictures aspire to being hung on the line; Corneille once interpreted by Talmax turns into a mere pretext for showing off the actor's powers. It is obvious that a mind degenerates when so turned from the subject to itself. Such aims can only degrade work; and even if one is indifferent to immediate success, counting on succeeding later through one's very disinterestedness, the result is the same. (209f; Fs) (notabene)

23/8 Inspiration is incompatible with selfish desire. Whoever wants something for himself sets truth aside: the jealous God will not sojourn with him. We must work, we said, in a spirit of eternity; what is less eternal than an ambitious aim? You are consecrated to truth, you must serve, not use it. (210; Fs) (notabene)

One throws oneself wholeheartedly only into causes that one would die for. Are you ready to die for the truth? Everything that a real lover of truth writes, everything that he thinks should be like the letters that St. Peter Martyr traced with the blood of his wound as he was dying: Credo. (210; Fs)

24/8 The selfish personality lessens every value that it touches; it contaminates everything, cheapens everything, it disorganizes our powers. The man who goes ahead, taking his inspiration from truth and leaving the responsibility for consequences to God, that man is a worthy thinker. "For me, to live is Christ," said St. Paul: that was a vocation and a certainty of victorious action. One is not really an intellectual unless one can say: For me, to live is truth. (210f; Fs)

25/8 A form of personality particularly harmful to work is that almost universal hypocrisy which consists in displaying an appearance of knowledge where sincerity would force us to acknowledge ignorance. That he hides intellectual indigence under the cloak of words is the reproach we make to the chance scribbler, the journalist spinning out an article, or the uneducated deputy; but every writer who questions himself honestly will have to admit that he yields every moment, on this point, to the suggestions of pride. One wants to keep one's secret; one hides one's lack of competence; one poses as big, knowing oneself to be little; one "asserts," "declares," "is sure"; at bottom one does not know; one imposes on the public; and, half-duped by one's own game, one deceives oneself. (211; Fs)

26/8 Another fundamental fault is to affect in our thought that pseudo-originality that a moment ago we condemned in style. It is intolerable pride to try to force truth into our personal mold, and it ends in stupidity. Truth is essentially impersonal. When it borrows our voice and our mind it will take the color of our personality without any effort of ours: it will do this all the more that we are not thinking about ourselves: but to exert pressure on truth so as to make it resemble us is to warp it-is to violate immortal reality by substituting for it our ephemeral self. (211f; Fs)

30/8 Seek the approval of God; be intent only on truth, for yourself and others; do not be a slave; make yourself worthy to say with Paul: "The word of God is not bound." (213; Fs)
This virtue of independence is so much the more necessary as the public, in the mass, has all the qualities needed to pull you down. The public has the elementary school mentality. In most circles and by the majority of its votes it proclaims conventions, not truths; it likes to be flattered; it fears above everything to have its quietude disturbed. To get it to listen to the essential truths, you must impose them by sheer insistence. You can do it, and the solitary thinker must try to exercise this felicitous violence. (213f; Fs) (notabene)

31/8 The thinker's power to succeed in this comes from taking his stand on his own thought and on the nature of things, from "striking like a deaf man" as Madame de Sévigné" said of Bourdaloue, and from shouting out the danger-cry which ends by rousing and subduing souls. (214; Fs)

The only really powerful and really compelling force is strong conviction joined to a character which offers guarantees to poor humanity. The very people who require you to court their favor despise a flatterer and surrender to a master. If you are of this world, this world will love you because you are its own; but its silent disdain will be the measure of your fall. (214; Fs)

32/8 This perverse world loves, at bottom, only saints; this cowardly world dreams of heroes; Roger Bontemps grows grave and has thoughts of conversion when he sees an ascetic. In such a world you must not yield to public opinion and write as if humanity were looking over your shoulder. You must shake yourself free of other people, as well as of yourself. In the intellectual domain as in every other, to rise above man is to prepare wondrous things, for it is opening the way to the Spirit. (214; Fs)

33/8 Seated at your writing table and in the solitude in which God speaks to the heart, you should listen as a child listens and write as a child speaks. The child is simple and detached because he has as yet no self-will, no pre-established positions, no artificial desires, no passions. His naive confidence and direct speech have an immense interest for us. A mature man, enriched by experience, who should yet preserve this simplicity of the child would be an admirable repository of truth, and his voice would reecho in the souls of his fellow men. (214f; Fs)