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evolution which is the inverse of the one usually observed—and this suggests perhaps some probable
hypothesis about the origin of our elementary sensations in our distant ancestors. Be that as it may,
there is nothing incomprehensible in all this. But can we conceive of someone who cannot distinguish
between yes and no in the way some cannot distinguish between red and green, or of another person
who manifests signs of what we call desiring something and then expresses contentment when it is
denied to him? Can we concede that there are two ways of listening or of looking just as there are
two ways of hearing and of affecting the retina? If, in addition to sensations, belief and desire differed
from one man to another, tradition would be but an empty word, and nothing human could be
transmitted unchanged from one generation to the next. When someone proves to me that he does not
smell the way I do, I feel alien and indifferent; but if he contradicts me, I immediately feel jarred by a
force contrary, hence similar to my own. If someone tried to placate me by saying that perhaps the
person in question does not deny just the way that I do, I would take it as a bad joke. Solely through
belief and desire do we both collaborate and compete; only through them, therefore, are we alike.
And no better reason can be given. Moreover, is it not clear that at the bottom of all human battles
there is a yes or a no, a velle or a nolle? *3 It is true that in religious, political or social debates, the
storm is most often aroused by two propositions which are not only contradictory but distinct, two
schemes not only contrary but heterogeneous. But it arises solely because, in asserting itself, each
thesis denies the other and because each volition opposes the other. History is but the recital of such
conflicts. On the contrary, it is our ways of feeling, either natural or acquired, that isolate us in the
struggle. Subtle or strong, delicate or coarse, they are, for each of us, the inoffensive but inviolable
presence which renders the surrounding world of discord and hate, charlatans and fanatics alien to us.
If this is true, it is legitimate to aggregate the quantities of belief or desire of separate individuals.
It has in fact been tried with complete success and adequate approximation. Variations in the
monetary value of things, statistical numbers, and also, as we shall see, the military triumphs or
defeats of nations, are, in diverse ways, valid processes for this type of measurement.
I shall not dwell on the first. Except where government bonds are the sole outlet for available
capital, stock market fluctuations are reasonably acceptable indicators of the vicissitudes of credit, of
natural confidence in the financial success of the state, or of some industrial enterprise. One bets
more or less heavily at the races according to the degree of confidence one has in the speed of a
horse. Taking into account the depreciation of precious metals and the variations in national wealth,
the elevation or decline of religious faith or of the certainty attached to threats of hell or promises of
heaven is evidenced at all times and in all places by the comparative number of monetary sacrifices
made at the alter and by bequests or donations to the clergy. It would be a delicate but not insoluable
problem to determine, with the help of these numbers (the comparative size of the population and the
total public fortune at two different periods, and several other numerical givens), the exact fraction
which would express the relation of the two total quantities of religious faith manifested in the same
country during these two periods. If, from one year to the next, shares were sold at 1,500 francs after
having been sold for 500 (without any variation in a company’s shareholder dividends or in general
conditions of credit), would it not be well founded to say that public confidence in the duration or
future increase of profits had tripled?
When properly handled, statistics can also furnish odd measures of general desire. According to
Mr. Bertillon, for example, in the Netherlands, out of 1,000 boys between 25 and 30, 112 marry each
year, and out of 1,000 widowers 355 remarry. *4 What we may conclude from this is that the desire for
marriage is about three times greater among the widowers than among the unmarried men of the same
age. For widows as compared with unmarried girls, it is only twice as great. Through the figures for