This question of pleasure is capital. Staid people generally neglect it as a frivolity; utilitarians, as a costly superfluity. Those whom we designate as pleasure-seekers forage in this delicate domain like wild boars in a garden. No one seems to doubt the immense human interest attached to joy. It is a sacred flame that must be fed, and that throws a splendid radiance over life. He who takes pains to foster it accomplishes a work as profitable for humanity as he who builds bridges, pierces tunnels, or cultivates the ground. So to order one's life as to keep, amid toils and suffering, the faculty of happiness, and be able to propagate it in a sort of salutary contagion among one's fellow-men, is to do a work of fraternity in the noblest sense. To give a trifling pleasure, smooth an anxious brow, bring a little light into dark paths--what a truly divine office in the midst of this poor humanity! But it is only in great simplicity of heart that one succeeds in filling it.
We are not simple enough to be happy and to render others so. We lack the singleness of heart and the self-forgetfulness. We spread joy, as we do consolation, by such methods as to obtain negative results. To console a person, what do we do? We set to work to dispute his suffering, persuade him that he is mistaken in thinking himself unhappy. In reality, our language translated into truthful speech would amount to this: "You suffer, my friend? That is strange; you must be mistaken, for I feel nothing." As the only human means of soothing grief is to share it in the heart, how must a sufferer feel, consoled in this fashion?
To divert our neighbor, make him pass an agreeable hour, we set out in the same way. We invite him to admire our versatility, to laugh at our wit, to frequent our house, to sit at our table; through it all, our desire to shine breaks forth. Sometimes, also, with a patron's prodigality, we offer him the beneficence of a public entertainment of our own choosing, unless we ask him to find amusement at our home, as we sometimes do to make up a party at cards, with the _arrière-pensée_ of exploiting him to our own profit. Do you think it the height of pleasure for others to admire us, to admit our superiority, and to act as our tools? Is there anything in the world so disgusting as to feel one's self patronized, made capital of, enrolled in a claque? To give pleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing the ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the diversions last. There is no worse kill-joy than the ego. We must be good children, sweet and kind, button our coats over our medals and titles, and with our whole heart put ourselves at the disposal of others.