Prelude
Plato says in a well-known passage in his Republic1 that something good can result only if those men come into positions of rule who have no liking for it. His meaning doubtless is, that ability being assumed, unwillingness to rule is a good guarantee that a man will rule truly and ably, whereas an ambitious man may only too easily become one who abuses his power to tyrannize, or one whom a liking for rule brings into an obscure dependence upon those over whom he is supposed to rule, so that his rule becomes an illusion.
This remark may also be applied to other situations where something really serious has to be done. Ability being assumed, it is best that the person in question should have no liking for the task. For doubtless it is true, as the proverb says, that liking makes the work go swiftly, but real seriousness only appears when a man with ability is compelled by a higher power against his liking to undertake the work — so it stands with ability opposed to liking.
To be a writer — well, yes, that does delight me; if I must be honest, I may say that I have been in love with writing — but, mind you, in the way I like to do it. What I have loved is exactly the opposite of working in the instant, what I have loved is the detachment in which, like a lover, I can dangle after the thoughts, and like an enamoured musician toying with his instrument I can wheedle out the expressions exactly as thought requires them — blissful pastime! in an eternity I could not become tired of this occupation!
To contend with men — well, yes, that does delight me in a certain sense. I am by nature so polemically constituted that I only feel myself really in my element when I am surrounded by human mediocrity and paltriness. Only on one condition, however, that I be permitted silently to despise, to satiate the passion which is in my soul, contempt, for which my life as an author has richly provided me with occasions.
So I am a man of whom it may be truly said that I have not the least liking for working in the instant — and presumably it is precisely for this reason I am selected for it.
If I am to work in the instant, I must, alas, bid farewell to thee, beloved detachment, where there was no need to hurry, always plenty of time, where I could wait hours, days, weeks, to find exactly the expression I wanted, whereas now I must break with all such cherished aims of love. And if I am to work in the instant, there will be a great many people to whom I owe it that at least from time to time I make reference to all the trifling things about which mediocrity with great self-importance orates in an instructive tone, all the galimatias it gets out of what I write by first putting it therein, all the lies and slander a man is exposed to against whom the two great powers of society, envy and stupidity, must by a certain necessity be united in conspiracy.
Why then am I willing to work in the instant? I am willing to do it because I should eternally regret having left it undone; and if I were to allow myself to be frightened away from it, I should eternally regret that the generation now living would find the true presentation of Christianity interesting and curious at the very most, so as to remain where they are, in the vain conceit that they are Christians and that the play-Christianity of the priests is Christianity.
Translator's Footnote
1Book I, cap. 19, and Book VII, cap. 5.