The human comedy

The life of the incarnate Spirit is like a novel, or rather, like a theatrical play, of which each day a leaf containing a scene is run through. The author is man; the characters are the passions, the vices and the virtues, matter and intelligence, disputing the possession of the hero, who is the Spirit. The audience is the world in general during the incarnation, the Spirits in erraticity, and the censor who examines the play in order to judge it in the last instance and pronounce a censure or a praise is God. See to it, then, that you are applauded the greatest number of times possible and that only rarely does the disagreeable noise of hissing reach your ears. May the plot always be simple, and seek no interest except in natural situations, which can serve to make virtue triumph, to develop intelligence and to moralize the audience.

During the performance of the play, the cabal set in motion by envy may attempt to criticize the best passages and only to extol those that are mediocre or bad. Close your ears to those flatteries and remember that posterity will appreciate you at your just value! You will leave an obscure or illustrious name, stained with shame or covered with glory, according to the world; but, when the play is finished and the curtain, fallen upon the last scene, places you in the presence of the universal regent, of the infinitely powerful director of the theater where the human comedy unfolds, there will be no flatterers, nor courtiers, nor envious ones, nor jealous ones: you will be alone with the supreme judge, impartial, equitable and just. May your work be serious and moralizing, because it is the only one that has any weight in the balance of the Almighty.

It is necessary that each one give to society at least what he receives from it: He who, having received the bodily and spiritual assistance that allows him to live, departs without even restoring what he spent, is a thief, because he wasted a part of the intelligent capital and produced nothing.

Not everyone can be a man of genius, but all can and must be honest, good citizens, and return to society what society lent them.

In order for the world to be in progress, it is necessary that each one leave a useful remembrance of his personality, one more scene in that infinite number of useful scenes that the members of Humanity have left, ever since your Earth has served as a place of habitation for Spirits.

See to it, then, that each one of the leaves of your novel is read with interest, and that they do not merely run through it with the eye, only to close it with weariness, after having read it halfway.

Eugène Sue. n [1]

[v. Eugène Sue.]