is the only universally serious thing in the world. Ask scientists
what they think of actors. They will tell you that there is no such
despicable profession in the world. Yet actors--and rightly, too--take
their art seriously.

Literature and music appear to those who cultivate them the most
absolutely serious things in existence, yet men of business, whose chief
object in life is money-making, shrug their shoulders, and feel ready to
say, like a London Lord Mayor to his son, who wanted to devote his life
to literature: 'I will be very much obliged to you if you will decide on
choosing an honest and respectable calling.'

What is serious to some is not to others. There is nothing in this world
which is universally serious--that is to say, recognised as serious by
all the civilized members of the human race, except bread and love.

The mission of man is to keep it alive with bread, and we perpetuate it
with love. When we have eaten and when we have loved, we have fulfilled
our mission. All the rest is accessory, and only more or less serious.

Poets and artists, who help make life beautiful, are not indispensable;
they are not serious. Scientists, who make great discoveries, help make
life more comfortable; they protect us against disease; they drug us;
they cure us, but they are not indispensable--the world would go on
without them; they are not serious.

* * *

Only as long as there is bread and there is love will the world go on
and the earth continue to be inhabited by the human race; bread and love
are serious.

I fear that I may have offended many people who think that they are
indispensable and that their vocation is serious. Well, I am very
sorry--very sorry indeed--but I cannot help it. The world was made thus,
and when it was made I was not consulted.

Put aside a few men and women, most of them to be found in the leisure
class or among the parasites of society, for whom love is a pastime, and
you will find that love is taken very seriously by men, if not quite in
the same way as it is taken by women, who are more delicate and refined
psychologists than men generally are.

But, my dear ladies, as long as we men are only too proud and happy to
fight the battle of life for you, to live for you, and, when occasion
arises, sometimes die for you, please thank the progress of
civilization, which has made us forget the origin of our relations
toward each other; do not give us reasons for reminding y