Fate and Faith
My family were not fools. My father and his brothers were traders, businessmen; in their own way the had to keep up with the times.
They could assess situations; they took risks and sometimes they could be very bold.
But they were buried so deep in their lives that they were not able to stand back and consider the nature of their lives.
They did what they had to do. When things went wrong way they had the consolidation of religion.
This wasn’t just a readiness to accept Fate; this was a quiet and profound conviction about the vanity of all human endeavour.
I could never rise so high. My own pessimism, my insecurity, was a more terrestrial affair. I was without the religious sense of my family.
The insecurity I felt was due to my lack of true religion, and was like the small change of the exalted pessimism of our faith, the pessimism that can drive men on to do wonders.
It was the price for my more materialist attitude, my seeking to occupy the middle ground, between absorption in life and soaring above the cares of the earth.
Edit: Il reste peut être des fautes d'orthographe, mais je m'améliore [:patapouf:7]