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Most people — and not only those who are uneducated but even the well-read — can have
the most contradictory, the most opposite ideas in their heads without even being aware
of the contradictions. I have seen numerous examples like that, of people who cherished
ideas and even had political, social, religious opinions on all the so-called higher fields of
human intelligence, who had absolutely contradictory opinions on the same subject, and
were not aware of it. And if you observe yourself, you will see that you have many ideas
which ought to be linked by a sequence of intermediate ideas which are the result of a
considerable widening of the thought if they are not to co-exist in an absurd way.

Therefore, before an individuality becomes truly individual and has its own qualities,
it must be contained in a vessel, otherwise it would spread out like water and would
no longer have any form at all. Some people, at a rather lower level, know themselves
only by the name they bear. They would not be able to distinguish themselves from their
neighbours except by their name. They are asked, “Who are you?” — ”My name is this.”

A little later they tell you the name of their occupation or about their main characteristic. If
they are asked, “Who are you?” — ”I am a painter.”

But at a certain level the only answer is the name. And what is a name? It is nothing
but a word, isn’t that so? And what is there behind? Nothing. It is a whole collection of
vague things which do not at all represent a person as different from his neighbour. He
is differentiated only because he has another name. If everybody bore the same name, it
would be very difficult to distinguish one person from another!

I read to you the other day from that book on aviation the story of the slave who, whenever
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he was asked a question, always answered by his name. But that was already a progress
compared with all those who were given the name of slave — for all of them it was the same
one — and they all accepted to have the same name, and therefore to be the same person.
For they had no individuality at all, they only had an occupation; and that occupation
being the same for a successive number of slaves, they all had the same name.

One lives by a kind of habit which is barely half-conscious — one lives, does not even
objectify what one does, why one does it, how one does it. One does it by habit. All those
who are born in a certain environment, a certain country, automatically take the habits
of that environment, not only material habits but habits of thought, habits of feeling and
habits of acting. They do it without watching themselves doing it, quite naturally, and if
someone points this out to them they are astonished.

As a matter of fact, one has the habit of sleeping, speaking, eating, moving and one does
all this as something quite natural, without wondering why or how.... And many other

1 Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes

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