A mind of this sort, peevish, bitter, misanthropical, it seems would
have been driven crazy by the war, but on the contrary it served to
tranquilise it. When the herd draws itself together in arms against
the stranger it is a fall for those rare free spirits who love the
whole world, but it raises the many who weakly vegetate in anarchistic
egotism, and lifts them to that higher stage of organised selfishness.
Camus woke up all at once, with the feeling that for the first time he
was not alone in the world.
Patriotism is perhaps the only instinct under present conditions which
escapes the withering touch of every-day life. All other instincts and
natural aspirations, the legitimate need to love and act in social
life, are stifled, mutilated and forced to pass under the yoke of
denial and compromise. When a man reaches middle life and turns to
look back, he sees these desires marked with his failures and his
cowardice; the taste is bitter on his tongue, he is ashamed of them
and of himself. Patriotism alone has remained outside, unemployed
but not tarnished, and when it re-awakes it is inviolate. The soul
embraces and lavishes on it the ardour of all the ambitions, the
loves, and the longings, that life has disappointed. A half century of
suppressed fire bursts forth, millions of little cages in the social
prison open their doors.
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