MODERN ARGONAUTS

WHAT DO THEY NEED to be happy? Lots of gold!

The war made a deep break in the history of Europe. Before her, the masses were moved in the name of vague progress, to conquer freedoms.
Crusades were undertaken for an idea, for the deliverance of holy sepulchers that were almost always empty. The modern Argonauts set out to conquer chimerical golden fleeces. Superior minds spent their lives making and unmaking constitutions. Democracies allowed themselves to be seduced by the mirage of resounding words.

Today, the conquest of gold appears to be the almost sole goal of the effort of civilized men. Conflicts, dynastic comedies, so-called social or economic reforms, in a word, all the interludes that governments provide to the crowd of spectators, no longer distract men from the thought that absorbs them, enriching themselves.

Money alone tends to make a difference between the civilized. Birth, education, work and genius are little without the support of a few millions. Wealth now has only worshipers and no judges.

However ugly the way in which one becomes enriched, whether through usury or gambling, or through some other maneuver, one is the object of sincere admiration or jealousy. Arousing these two feelings is the sign and reward of happy audacity. The end justifies the means and the prestige of money ennobles the effort one has made or the trickery one has deployed to seize it.

The times are near when it will be unsafe to be poor. We have rejected far from us the ideas that people nourished themselves during their childhood and youth. The true modern sages are those who know the price of time and money and only care about living as best as possible, constantly increasing, varying and multiplying their enjoyments.

A man who would question today the meaning and purpose of life would appear to us, in truth, as a ghost from another age. We are now passionate about one thing: acquiring wealth at all costs. Faith and science interest us less than we think. An infinite number of people care little about being governed in the name of a monarch or a republic: they look elsewhere. They measure their needs and only murmur against the difficulty they experience in satisfying them. They reflect with envy on the pleasures they are forbidden to obtain. Everything suggests that they will not allow themselves to be slowly consumed by deprivations, like their fathers, and that they are not prepared to put up with a continual mediocrity of existence.

We no longer need only bread, fruit, milk, livestock, game and fish. If we crowded into cities, if we gave up our share of the soil, the forest and the river, if we severed our ties with the nourishing earth, if we agreed to no longer take with our own hands in the granaries of abundance of the plant and animal kingdoms, it is because we judged that it was preferable to be rich in precious metals.

There has never been such a mass of individuals enjoying enormous fortunes in peace. The extravagance of our rich leaves far behind the elementary luxury of antiquity and the Middle Ages. A dish of lamprey brains and a few thousand sesterces given to a hetaera immortalized a man.

Today, a steel king's ball costs a million dollars; the winner of the Grand-Prix de Paris is bought for twelve hundred thousand francs; We rub elbows in the streets with courtesans who waste fortunes every year.

Do we talk about these events for more than a day, only good for exercising the verve of our gazetteers? We now know that the war was the great celebration of speculation. The prophets of doom claim that such profound changes in Western life may only be harbingers of a terrible night full of crime and tears.
So many prophecies have not come true!

Francois Lebon