After all, there is only one object which we can study, and that is the modes and metamorphoses of the human spirit.  All other studies lead us back to this one.

I have never felt the inward assurance of genius, nor the foretaste of celebrity, nor of happiness, nor even the prospect of being husband, father, or respected citizen.  This indifference to the future is itself a sign; my dreams are vague, indefinite; I must not now live, because I am now hardly capable of living.  Let me control myself; let me leave life to the living, and betake myself to my ideas; let me write the testament of my thoughts and of my heart.

Heroism and Duty

Heroism is the splendid and wonderful triumph of the soul over the flesh; that is to say, over fear—­the fear of poverty, suffering, calumny, disease, isolation and death.  There is no true piety without this dazzling concentration of courage.

Duty has this great value—­it makes us feel reality of the positive world, while yet it detaches us from it.

How vulnerable am I!  If I were a father, what a host of sorrows a child could bring on me!  As a husband, I should suffer in a thousand ways, because a thousand conditions are necessary to my happiness.  My heart is too sensitive, my imagination anxious, and despair is easy.  The “might be” spoils for me what is, the “should be” devours me with melancholy; and this reality, present, irreparable, inevitable, disgusts or frightens me.  So it is that I put away the happy images of family life.  Every hope is an egg which may hatch a serpent instead of a dove; every joy that fails is a knife-wound; every seed-time entrusted to destiny has its harvest of pain.

What is duty?  Is it to obey one’s nature at its best and most spiritual; or is it to vanquish one’s nature?  That is the deepest question.  Is life essentially the education of the spirit and of the intelligence, or is it the education of the will?  And does will lie in power or in resignation?

Therefore are there two worlds—­Christianity affords and teaches salvation by the conversion of the will; but humanism brings salvation by the emancipation of the spirit.  The first seizes upon the heart, and the other upon the brain.  The first aims at illumining by healing, the other at healing by illumining.  Now, moral love, the first of these two principles, places the centre of the individual in the centre of his being.  For to love is virtually to know; but to know is not virtually to love.  Redemption by knowledge or by intellectual love is inferior to redemption by the will or by moral love.  The former is critical and negative; the latter is life-giving, fertilising, positive.  Moral force is the vital point.

The Era of Mediocrity

The era of mediocrity in all things is beginning, and mediocrity freezes desire.  Equality engenders uniformity; and evil is got rid of by sacrificing all that is excellent, remarkable, extraordinary.  Everything becomes less coarse but more vulgar.  The epoch of great men is passing away; the epoch of the ant-hill is upon us.  The age of individualism is in danger of having no real individuals.  Things are certainly progressing, but souls decline.