Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/85



the underlying unity of his thought was remarkable, Jaurès was always growing and developing, and re-examining his ideas. He said of himself: “I do not make the puerile pretension of never having changed in twenty years of experience, of study and of struggle, or rather I will not so far calumniate myself as to say that Life has taught me nothing.” No nature could have been more open to the teachings of Life. As a very young man he was chiefly a student and he speaks of the separation of the life of the University from that of the practical world. Of Socialism, especially of German Socialist thinkers, he knew a great deal from books, while as yet he was absolutely unaware of the fact that socialist groups existed in France, that propaganda was going on, that there were even rival sects! When at last he came into contact with life and with the Socialist movement, and abandoned the student's world in which he had hitherto lived, the men and the facts with which he was now in relation influenced him almost too