The Marmot with the Collar
Diary of a Philosopher

I made yesterday an attempt to win over my wife. I despair of success.

My wife makes fun of the Long Night, of Winter and of the mysteries of our sleep. She calls my studies chimeras and my arguments misplaced curiosities.

“You wish to observe our sleep,” she said. “The idea is not new; but it leads to nothing. To do it well, one would have to observe it in oneself, because, in others, one could observe only the externality and appearance of sleep. One would have to be conscious of sleeping, that is to say, one would have to sleep and not sleep at the same time.”

I confess that I remained tight lipped while I listened to this discourse. My wife has arguments which she casts in your face and throw you suddenly. I don’t know from where she gets these. She has not reflected on anything; she makes profession of not reflecting at all, and yet there is no subject on which she touches without sowing ideas that are apposite and new. My wife has a certain genius. Her eloquence is contagious. I have been married for only five days, and already I am asking myself if Philosophy be not simply a deception.

I returned to the attack even so, and I tried to demonstrate that the observation of the appearance of sleep is not so futile an activity after all, and that it matters to us a great deal, theoretically and practically, to distinguish between the two types of sleep, to know what are the causes and effects of the sleep of the Long Night and to what degree of insensibility it can reduce us.

My wife agreed with this, but only to deny immediately the possibility of all useful observation of the sleep of the Long Night.

“One could,” she said, “observe ordinary sleep in another, because it is an individual sleep, and because it does not come over us all at the same time. The cause that produces it varies in intensity according to a multitude of circumstances, and we can defer it or delay it almost at will. The sleep of the Long Night does not resemble this at all. It is a sleep of a particular kind. It overtakes us all equally, at a moment and with an intensity that are determined by causes that are independent of us. The most steadfast will can hardly delay it for a few instants, and it could not, in those few instants, allow the clarity of intellect that is necessary for all serious observation. What to think of Marmots who sleep when they are three quarters occupied in observing other Marmots who are completely asleep? A fine Philosophy that requires Holly leaves to keep it awake! And who tells you that Holly leaves are sufficient? The White Hare was right, my friend. Nature is ineluctable. If it is written that, at such a temperature, sleep must overcome us, we would try in vain to remain awake. It is like water, which has a moment when it freezes. If you remained awake later than others, last Autumn, it is because it was warmer in your Burrow, located lower down; but from the time when you found yourself under the same conditions as others, you were seized like them by sleep, and all your science will not serve even to recall to mind how you fell asleep beside the lawful hosts of the residence that you violated – as a Philosopher vagabond.”

When my wife had finished speaking, I asked her where she found the time to think of all these matters, she who took pride in employing all her reason to think as little as possible. She replied that I was presumptuous, if I thought that I was the only member of our race to have some facility in ideas and to meditate without profit on the problems of existence. She argued that Marmots possess naturally a spirit that is inclined to contemplation, that they used to philosophize much in other times, that they philosophize still in their youth, and that it is the experience of life and the deceptions of Science that have restored in them a positive spirit. I have remained naïve, she said; my stay with Men has disrupted my ordinary course through life, and if I continue to philosophize at my age, it can only be as a vestige of childhood.

The word “childhood” seemed excessive. I wished to protest; but she did not allow herself to be interrupted. The words rolled from her lips more abundantly, more impetuously than the stream of the torrent that roars at the base of the valley.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, “as a vestige of childhood! What is this fear of the sleep of the Long Night, if not a vestige of childhood? Nature has willed this sleep. I trust in Nature. All that she does is done well. And if it were true that she erred, still we could not correct her. There is the nihilism of your Philosophy. It ends always in wishing to correct Nature, never in having the power to do so. What does it matter to us if anything happens while we sleep? Are we better protected when we are awake? Was my late last husband not at my side, frolicking with me on the new grass, the first day of the Moon of Love, when death struck him? Men, you say, took possession of you while you were asleep. Have they never taken a Marmot during the heat of Summer? You wish to know what Winter is. Unwholesome curiosity! Winter is winter. What use to me are a few scintillations of Snowflakes and the majesty of a silence that the least wind can disturb? The beauty of Winter consists for me in lying fast asleep beside my husband and my children. Happy the races that sleep! Do you not see that these Hares, who never sleep, are the most melancholic of all the animals of the mountain? They are unhappy because they live from Philosophy. The instinct of Nature, who wills not that a race should perish, makes them to seek each other out in the Springtime; beside that, what do they know of each other? Do they know only themselves? They know Philosophy. Dismal Philosophy, which makes of a living animal an egotistical dreamer. Sleep is the source of the joy of life. There is more joy in one single Marmot who sleeps than in ten Hares who do not sleep. You desire mysteries! What good is it to seek them so far away! Is not everything a mystery, within us and around us? Will you be any further advanced when you know how many Moons the Long Night lasts? Suppose that it lasts six months, so be it. Six Moons of rest seem not too many to compensate six Moons of restlessness. The great mystery is Nature, who contains all other in herself. We do not know what Nature is; but whoever closes not his ears, hears her voice. I hear her myself, I hear her clearly, and I follow her. She commands me to love you, and I love you: this is my Philosophy.”

Thus spoke my wife, and it seemed that her discourse must not reach any conclusion. As she was uttering these last words, she threw herself into my arms, which were open, and embraced me with a strength so extraordinary that I nearly suffocated. I could not say if this long disquisition gave me pain or pleasure. The one and the other. My wife is adorable. She is infinitely superior to me. Perhaps she has chosen the right lot. Would that we had chosen in the same way!