JOURNAL 1933
ing the proofs that I am to give hack to Malraux today. I must go out
again to dinner. Dreadful night. I have again forgotten how to sleep.
The last few nights I have hardly gone to sleep before three o'clock
and am awakened as early as six thirty, not so much by sounds as by
the trembling of the house. Brain again rather active; I hesitated to
get up and note certain reflections that seemed to me important and
that I feared to be unable to recapture later on. Since continuous work
is impossible, I should like at least to write down rapidly here, just as
they come to me, the thoughts that are tormenting me; without care to
put them in order and without fear of contradicting myself, But first
this, to be added to what I began to write the day before yesterday.
Yes, it is sentimental reasons that make me strive to find some
ground for reconciliation, for possible agreement, between Christianity
and Communism. But I see only too well, alas, how and why capitalism
and Catholicism are bound up together and the great advantage that
capitalism can find in a religion that teaches a man whom society
strikes on the right cheek to hold out the left, which benumbs the op-
pressed and soothes him with hopes of an afterlife, transfers rewards
to a mystical plane, and lets the oppressor enjoy a triumph which it
persuades the oppressed to be but illusion. How could the man who
knows that Christ said: "happy those that weep" fail to take advantage
of Catholicism, and how could "those that weep'* not accept submission
if they know that "the last shall be first"? Theirs is the kingdom of
God; the possessors leave it to them if it is well understood that those
that weep will leave to the possessors the kingdom of this earth. Every-
thing therefore is for the best and no one has anything to complain
about. Christ remains on the side of the poor, to be sure; the rich leave
him on their hands. The poor almost thank them for this. They know
that they have "the better part/' And probably Christ did not want
this. In his time the social question could not be raised. Replying to a
specious question, he said: "Render unto Caesar. . . ." So much has
been rendered unto Caesar that there is nothing left but for him. But
the poor know that everything they give up here below will be "re-
turned to them an hundred fold." One cannot imagine a better invest-
ment!
And the rich still find a way of conciliating Christ (or of reconciling
themselves with him) by making a point of being "charitable." For,
after all, they have kindness — which will allow them, they hope, while
keeping all their advantages "here below," not to allow themselves to
be dispossessed of all hope of still being, after death, on the right side,
16 January
Too little time, the last few days, for writing in this notebook, when
it just happens that I should have had the most to write in it. Great