THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

As he reflected further, he knew that, despite his unfavourable
treatment in Belgium, the country of his birth and that of hisfamily,
he must continue to struggle to try to achieve security
for his life's work though the news in the world was desperately
bad («Hitler is in Vienna»). He had some encouragement
when at last he received a promise that the Palais
Mondial would be re-opened. 51
In the evening a week after these thoughts had been
recorded, a few hours before his birthday, he looked back
across the many years of his life once again and thought
«Such a long life... what have I done in it? With what havemy
hands been full and with what have they been empty?»
As he peered down the years, he mused about «the nature of
a man», and upon his own beginnings. First came birth, then
the death of his mother and the family's removal to Paris.
And then Fernande. Upon this period his memory touched
gently, lightly, wandered, lingered. They were «years of a
vegetable life» lived v/ith «sheep and goats» but with somefew
and faithful friends, too. He recalled an incident involving
his father. They were dining together, and, enraged at
Otlet's «pigheadedness» about some sugar «I saw», he
recalled, «to my stupification, my father hurl an empty coffeecup
to the floor near some people»... and there had been a
ball given by his father... and the transformation in Fernande
who became quite changed». 52
Later in the year Cato lost patience with Otlet's protracted
failing attempts to restore the Mundaneum. «Cato has opened
my eyes», he said. She had made him face up to the fact
that his optimism about the future of his institutes was thoroughly
ill-founded. But he was more concerned, more alarmen
about what she had said about herself. «I make Cato suffer*,,
he wrote, «who has been the only person who has really
loved me, and has proved it continuously*. He decided that
the prolongation, the continuation is impossible. I cannot ask her ta
exceed the limits of good will. I have imposed an unbearable life on
her for too long, for she has had to look forward to a conclusion
about which she has become sceptical because she has suffered toomuch
... (she has) become indifferent to the work, to my work.
Cato had delivered an ultimatum, and once more, Otlet, now
at the end of his life, faced the same kind of personal conflict
over which he had agonised as a young man. The resolution,,
however, came more easily. «Can I demand a continuation?*
he asked himself, and answered unhesitatingly, «No!» At
seventy years of age he was in the classical predicament of
being torn between love and duty. «I do not want her tosuffer
nor to make the work suffer.» He recognised the dilemma
himself. «To choose between two loves, two duties. I do not
know how to unite them in one sentiment.* Upon just this.
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