GRAVITY AND GRACE, Simone Weil
All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.
We must always expect things to happen in conformity with the laws of gravity unless there is supernatural intervention.
Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.
Gravity. Generally what we expect of others depends on the effect of gravity upon ourselves, what we receive from them depends on the effect of gravity upon them. Sometimes (by chance) the two coincide, often they do not.
What is the reason that as soon as one human being shows he needs another (no matter whether his need be slight or great) the latter draws back from him? Gravity.
Lear, a tragedy of gravity. Everything we call base is a phenomenon due to gravity. Moreover the word baseness is an indication of this fact.
The object of an action and the level of the energy by which it is carried out are distinct from each other. A certain thing must be done. But where is the energy to be drawn for its accomplishment? A virtuous action can lower a man if there is not enough energy available on the same level.
What is base and what is superficial are on the same level. ‘His love is violent but base’: a possible sentence. ‘His love is deep but base’: an impossible one.
If it be true that the same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one (the people who stood, motionless, from one to eight o’clock in the morning for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do so in order to save a human life), a base form of virtue is perhaps in some respects better able to stand the test of difficulties, temptations and misfortunes than a noble one. Napoleon’s soldiers. Hence the use of cruelty in order to sustain or raise the morale of soldiers. Something not to be forgotten in connexion with moral weakness.
This is a particular example of the law which generally puts force on the side of baseness. Gravity is, as it were, a symbol of it.
Queueing for food. The same action is easier if the motive is base than if it is noble. Base motives have in them more energy than noble ones. Problem: in what way can the energy belonging to the base motives be transferred to the noble ones?
I must not forget that at certain times when my headaches were raging I had an intense longing to make another human being suffer by hitting him in exactly the same part of his forehead.
Analogous desires—very frequent in human beings.
When in this state, I have several times succumbed to the temptation at least to say words which cause pain. Obedience to the force of gravity. The greatest sin. Thus we corrupt the function of language, which is to express the relationship between things.
Attitude of supplication: I must necessarily turn to something other than myself since it is a question of being delivered from self.
Any attempt to gain this deliverance by means of my own energy would be like the efforts of a cow which pulls at its hobble and so falls onto its knees.
In making it one liberates a certain amount of energy in oneself by a violence which serves to degrade more energy. Compensation as in thermodynamics; a vicious circle from which one can be delivered only from on high.
The source of man’s moral energy is outside him, like that of his physical energy (food, air etc.). He generally finds it, and that is why he has the illusion—as on the physical plane—that his being carries the principle of its preservation within itself. Privation alone makes him feel his need. And, in the event of privation, he cannot help turning to anything whatever which is edible.
There is only one remedy for that: a chlorophyll conferring the faculty of feeding on light.
Not to judge. All faults are the same. There is only one fault: incapacity to feed upon light, for where capacity to do this has been lost all faults are possible.
‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.’
There is no good apart from this capacity.
To come down by a movement in which gravity plays no part. … Gravity makes things come down, wings make them rise: what wings raised to the second power can make things come down without weight?
Creation is composed of the descending movement of gravity, the ascending movement of grace and the descending movement of the second degree of grace.
Grace is the law of the descending movement.
To lower oneself is to rise in the domain of moral gravity.
Moral gravity makes us fall towards the heights.
Too great affliction places a human being beneath pity: it arouses disgust, horror and scorn.
Pity goes down to a certain level but not below it. What does charity do in order to descend lower?
Have those who have fallen so low pity on themselves?
