Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/41

 harmonious and truly human, from which the present reality is still far off, but which is bound to realize itself. This faith, which doubt never touched, is in essence truly religious."

It is this deep undercurrent in the life of the ardent and vigorous politician which is so surprising. His was a nature at once deep and wide, readily responsive and yet having in its own inner life the capability for those finer experiences which seem generally to come only to poets and to those who live much alone. In illustration of his idea of the interpenetrability of Man and Nature Jaurès wrote: "… In the same measure that we act upon the exterior world it acts upon us. There are hours when we feel in treading the ground a joy as tranquil and profound as the earth herself.… How many times, walking in the paths across fields, I have said to myself suddenly that it was the Earth that I was treading, that I was hers and she mine, and without thinking of it I slackened my pace because it was not worth while to hasten on her surface, because I felt her in each step and possessed her wholly, and my soul, if I may so express it, walked in her depths. How many times also, lying on the top of a ditch, turned, at the decline of day, towards the soft blue East, I thought suddenly that the earth was journeying, that flying the weariness of day and the limited horizons of the sun, she was going