Here is a man who says to me: “My happiness! My happiness! But it consists in never thinking of my soul.” What a sad thing! And how gravely one must have offended others and one’s own self to have reached that point! For where shall he who loves torment, passionate restlessness, uncertainty, and remorse discover these terrible blessings if it is not in the depths of his own hateful ego? IX If anyone tells you something strange about the world, something you have never heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him repeat it, make him explain it: no doubt there is something there worth taking hold of. The cult of the soul is a perpetual discovery of itself and the universe which it reflects. The purest happiness is not a stable and final frame of mind, it is an equilibrium produced by an incessant compromise which has to be adroitly reëstablished; it is the reward of a constant activity; it increases in proportion to the daily corrections one brings to it. One must not cling obstinately to one’s own interpretations of the world but unceasingly renew the flowers on the altar. In quite another order of ideas I think of those old-fashioned manufacturers who are immovably set against trying any of the new machines and perish in their stubbornness. That is nothing but a comparison: to justify the machine folly is quite the opposite of my desire. I simply wish to show that routine affects equally the things of the mind and of the heart, that it is a very formidable thing. Kipling, I believe, tells the story of a Hindu colony that was decimated by famine. The poor folk let themselves die of hunger without touching the wheat that had been brought for them, because they had been used to eating millet. If the sacred lamp of happiness some day comes to lack the ritual oil, we shall not let it go out; we shall surely find something with which to feed it, something that will serve for light and heat. X The will to happiness attains its perfection in the mature man. With adolescence it passes through a redoubtable crisis. Nietzsche says: “There is less melancholy in the mature man than in the young man.” It is true. Very young people cultivate sadness as something noble. They do not readily forgive themselves for not being always sad. They have discovered the mysterious isle of melancholy and do not wish to escape from it again. They love everything about that black magician and his attitudes and his tears and his nostalgia and his romantic beauty. They have a fierce disdain for vulgar pleasures and take refuge in sadness because they do not yet know the splendor and majesty of joy. But in their own fashion, which is full of disdain, reserve and ingenuous complexity, they do not any the less seek for happiness.