I cannot better bring out all the novelty of this attitude of the ‘clerk’ than by quoting the remark of Renan, which would be signed by all men of thought from Socrates onwards: ‘Man belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs only to himself, for he is a free being, that is, a moral being.’ To this Barrès replies, amid the applause of his compeers: ‘To be moral is _not to wish to be free from one’s race_.’ Here, obviously, is an exaltation of the gregarious spirit which the nations had heard little of before from the priests of the spirit. The modern ‘clerks’ do better still. They declare that their thought cannot be good, that it cannot bear good fruit, unless they remain on their native soil, unless they are not ‘uprooted’ (‘_déracinés_’). They congratulate A on working in _his_ Bearn, B in _his_ Berry, C in _his_ Brittany. And they not only proclaim this law for the poets, but for critics, moralists, philosophers, the servants of purely intellectual activity. To declare the mind good to the extent of its refusal to liberate itself from the earth is something which will make the modern ‘clerks’ certain of a conspicuous place in the annals of the spiritual life. Obviously, the feelings of this class of men has changed since Plutarch taught: ‘Man is not a plant created to be immobile and to have his roots fixed in the soil where he was born,’ and since Antisthenes replied to his colleagues who boasted that they were native to the soil, that ‘they shared this honour with the slugs and grasshoppers’. Need I say that I am only denouncing this desire of the ‘clerk’ to feel himself determined by his race and to remain fixed to his native soil to the extent that it becomes in him a political attitude, a nationalist provocation. The best way for me to define this is by quoting this hymn of a modern ‘clerk’ to ‘his soil and his dead’, a hymn completely void of political passion: ‘And the old oak under which I am sitting speaks in its turn, and says to me: ‘“Read, read in my shadow those Gothic songs whose refrains I heard in the past mingle with the rustling of my leaves. The souls of your ancestors are in these songs that are older than I am. Learn to know those humble ancestors, share their past joys and sorrows. Thus, O transitory creature, shalt thou live long ages in a few years. Be pious, venerate the soil of your country. Never take up a handful in your hand without remembering that it is sacred. Love all those far-off relatives whose dust mingled with earth has fed me for centuries, whose minds have passed into you, their Benjamin, the child of better days. Reproach not your ancestors with their ignorance, nor with the feebleness of their thought, nor even with the illusions of fear which sometimes rendered them cruel. As well reproach yourself for having been a child. Remember that they laboured, that they suffered, that they hoped for you, and that you owe everything to them!”’[47]