Hermann Hesse Quote

Now what we call bourgeois, when regarded as an element always to be found in humanlife, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between thecountless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of thesecoupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It isopen to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal ofsaintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up entirely to the life of instinct, tothe lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. Theone path leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surrender to God. The other pathleads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surrender to corruption. Now it isbetween the two, in the middle of the road, that the bourgeois seeks to walk. He will neversurrender himself either to lust or to asceticism. He will never be a martyr or agree to his owndestruction. On the contrary, his ideal is not to give up but to maintain his own identity. Hestrives neither for the saintly nor its opposite. The absolute is his abhorrence. He may be ready toserve God, but not by giving up the fleshpots. He is ready to be virtuous, but likes to be easy andcomfortable in this world as well. In short, his aim is to make a home for himself between twoextremes in a temperate zone without violent storms and tempests; and in this he succeedsthough it be at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. A mancannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing morehighly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves hisown preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessedby God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to thatdeathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak