The Diary of a Country Priest

by Georges Bernanos

The world of Evil is so far beyond our understanding! Nor can I really succeed in picturing hell as a world, a universe. It is nothing, never will be anything but a half-formed shape, the hideous shape of an abortion, a stunted thing on the very verge of all existence. I think of sullied translucent patches on the sea. Does the Monster care that there should be one criminal more or less? Immediately he sucks down the crime into himself; makes it one with his horrible substance, digests without once rousing from his terrifying eternal lethargy. Yet historians, moralists, even philosophers refuse to see anything but the criminal, they re-create evil in the image and likeness of humanity. They form no idea of essential evil, that vast yearning for the void, for emptiness: since if ever our species is to perish it will die of boredom, of stale disgust. Humanity will have been slowly eaten up as a beam by invisible fungi, which transform in a few weeks a block of oakwood into spongy matter which our fingers have no difficulty in breaking. And the moralist will dissertate on passions, the statesman redouble his police, the educationalist draw up new courses of study—treasures will be squandered wholesale for the useless moulding of a dough which contains no leaven. (As for instance the world wars of today which would seem to show such prodigious human activity, are in fact indictments of the growing apathy of humanity. In the end, at certain stated periods, they will lead huge f...