Such exercises of the soul are impossible to a real acquiescence, which cannot even permit itself the inspiration of the final illusion that the wreck of human hopes, being ordained, is beautiful.  The man who acquiesces is condemned to stand apart and contemplate a puppet-show with which he can never really sympathise.

’De toutes les definitions de l’homme la plus mauvaise me parait celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable.  Je ne me vante pas excessivement en me donnant pour doue de plus de raison que la plupart de ceux de mes semblables que j’ai vus de pres ou dont j’ai connu l’histoire.  La raison habite rarement les ames communes, et bien plus rarement encore les grands esprits....  J’appelle raisonnable celui qui accorde sa raison particuliere avec la raison universelle, de maniere a n’etre jamais trop surpris de ce qui arrive et a s’y accommoder tant bien que mal; j’appelle raisonnable celui qui, observant le desordre de la nature et la folie humaine, ne s’obstine point a y voir de l’ordre et de la sagesse; j’appelle raisonnable enfin celui qui ne s’efforce pas de l’etre.’

The chasm between living and being wise (which is to be raisonnable) is manifest.  The condition of living is to be perpetually surprised, incessantly indignant or exultant, at what happens.  To bridge the chasm there is for the wise man only one way.  He must cast back in his memory to the time when he, too, was surprised and indignant.  No man is, after all, born wise, though he may be born with an instinct for wisdom.  Thus Anatole France touches us most nearly when he describes his childhood.  The innocent, wayward, positive, romantic little Pierre Noziere[4] is a human being to a degree to which no other figures in the master’s comedy of unreason are.  And it is evident that Anatole France himself finds him by far the most attractive of them all.  He can almost persuade himself, at moments, that he still is the child he was, as in the exquisite story of how, when he had been to a truly royal chocolate shop, he attempted to reproduce its splendours in play.  At one point his invention and his memory failed him, and he turned to his mother to ask:  ’Est-ce celui qui vend ou celui qui achete qui donne de l’argent?’

’Je ne devais jamais connaitre le prix de l’argent.  Tel j’etais a trois ans ou trois ans et demi dans le cabinet tapisse de boutons de roses, tel je restai jusqu’a la vieillesse, qui m’est legere, comme elle l’est a toutes les ames exemptes d’avarice et d’orgueil.  Non, maman, je n’ai jamais connu le prix de l’argent.  Je ne le connais pas encore, ou plutot je le connais trop bien.’

   [Footnote 4:  Le Petit Pierre.  Par Anatole France. (Paris: 
   Calmann-Levy.)]