Vincit que se vincit.
Vincit que se vincit.
“He conquers who conquers himself.”
In the opening scene of Disney’s take on the French fairytale, The Beauty and the Beast, this phrase is found on a stain glass window of the Beast’s palace while the narrator tells the Beast’s background: a pompous prince indefinitely doomed to live as a creature.
If you’re familiar with the story, you may recognize how this phrase informs the Beast’s character, his entire mission being to break his curse by showing he is capable of loving others as himself—a feat that demands he conquer himself and his darker tendencies of anger and arrogance.
But the call to conquer oneself doesn’t end with the Beast. It also stares into the souls of the villagers (Gaston), whose moral descent offers warnings of what we look like when we dismiss the inscription. Unlike the Beast, we watch Gaston become increasingly bloodthirsty, convinced it’s the malevolent force at work in the castle that’s coming for them. And then, led by Gaston, we watch as the villagers become villains, content to blame the Beast for their problems while they ignore the snakes slithering in their own hearts, sowing discord and darkness—violating Nietzsche’s injunction that “he who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.”
The villagers’ descent, a reminder that it’s rarely the enemy out there that we ought to fear; much more often it’s the dark forces within. The ones we feed when we point out the speck in another’s eye while we ignore the plank in our own. The ones that try to convince us our neighbor is the enemy rather than one we ought to see, and love, as ourselves. The ones that inch us away from love and nudge us toward hate.
But the Beast shows us how love—the thing that conquers all—starts with conquering oneself. Reminding us to include those that would exclude us. To meet grievance with grace. To be bigger than the things that hurt us. And to, like the Beast when he pulls Gaston back from the edge, not allow being hated give way us hating in return.
Because that’s the only way to lead the world to the light. Look within. And move with love, always.