quote · Legacy record

If you try to convert someone, it will never be toeffect his salvation but to make him suffer like yourself,to be sure he is exposed to the same ordeals andendures them with the same impatience. You keepwatch, you pray, you agonize-provided he does too,sighing, groaning, beset by the same tortures that areracking you. Intolerance is the work of ravaged soulswhose faith comes down to a more or less deliberatetorment they would like to see generalized, instituted.The happiness of others never having been a motiveor principle of action, it is invoked only to appeaseconscience or to parade noble excuses: whenever wedetermine upon an action, the impulse leading to itand forcing us to complete it is almost always inadmissible.No one saves anyone; for we save only ourselves,and do so all the better if we disguise asconvictions the misery we want to share, to lavish onothers. However glamorous its appearances, proselytismnonetheless derives from a suspect generosity,worse in its effects than a patent aggression. No oneis willing to endure alone the discipline he may evenhave assented to, nor the yoke he has shouldered.Vindication reverberates beneath the missionary'sbonhomie, the apostle's joy. We convert not to liberatebut to enchain.Once someone is shackled by a certainty, he enviesyour vague opinions, your resistance to dogmas orslogans, your blissful incapacity to commit yourself.

If you try to convert someone, it will never be toeffect his salvation but to make him suffer like yourself,to be sure he is exposed to the same ordeals andendures them with the same impatience. You keepwatch, you pray, you agonize-provided he does too,sighing, groaning, beset by the same tortures that areracking you. Intolerance is the work of ravaged soulswhose faith comes down to a more or less deliberatetorment they would like to see generalized, instituted.The happiness of others never having been a motiveor principle of action, it is invoked only to appeaseconscience or to parade noble excuses: whenever wedetermine upon an action, the impulse leading to itand forcing us to complete it is almost always inadmissible.No one saves anyone; for we save only ourselves,and do so all the better if we disguise asconvictions the misery we want to share, to lavish onothers. However glamorous its appearances, proselytismnonetheless derives from a suspect generosity,worse in its effects than a patent aggression. No oneis willing to endure alone the discipline he may evenhave assented to, nor the yoke he has shouldered.Vindication reverberates beneath the missionary'sbonhomie, the apostle's joy. We convert not to liberatebut to enchain.Once someone is shackled by a certainty, he enviesyour vague opinions, your resistance to dogmas orslogans, your blissful incapacity to commit yourself.

Approximate author period: c. 1953 AD · modern