At the outset, therefore, Rolland designed to call the book "un roman-méditation." It was to have been entitled "L'un contre tous," this being an adaptation of La Boëtie's title _Contr'un_. The proposed name was, however, ultimately abandoned for fear of misunderstanding. The spiritual character of the new work recalls a long-forgotten tradition, the meditations of the old French moralists, the sixteenth century stoics who during a time of war-madness endeavored in besieged Paris to maintain their intellectual serenity by engaging in Platonic dialogues. The war itself, however, was not to be the theme, for the free soul does not strive with the elements. The author's intention was to discuss the spiritual accompaniments of this war, for these to Rolland seemed as tragical as the destruction of millions of men. His concern was the destruction of the individual soul in the deluge produced by the overflowing of the mass soul. He wished to show how strenuous an effort must be made by any one who would escape from the tyranny of the herd instinct; to display the hateful enslavement of individuals by the revengeful, jealous, and authoritarian mentality of the crowd; to depict the terrific efforts which a man must make if he would avoid being sucked into the maelstrom of epidemic falsehood. He hoped to make it clear that what appears to be the simplest thing in the world is in reality the most difficult of tasks in these epochs of excessive solidarity, namely, for a man to remain what he really is, and not to become that which the levelling forces of the world, the fatherland, or some other artificial community, would fain make of him. Romain Rolland deliberately refrained from casting his hero in a heroic mold, the treatment thus differing from what he had chosen in the case of Jean Christophe. Agenor Clerambault is an inconspicuous figure, a quiet fellow of little account, an author of no particular note, one of those persons whose literary work succeeds in pleasing a complaisant generation, though it has no significance for posterity. He has the nebulous idealism of mediocre minds; he hymns the praises of perpetual peace and international conciliation. His own tepid goodness makes him believe that nature is good, is man's wellwisher, desiring to lead mankind gently onward towards a more beautiful future. Life does not torment him with problems, and he therefore extols life amid the tranquil comforts of his bourgeois existence. Blessed with a kindly and somewhat simple-minded wife, and with two children, a son and a daughter, he may be considered a modern Theocritus wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, singing the joyful present and the still more joyful future of our ancient cosmos.