"People of God, awake! Sow in
tears, that ye may reap in triumph!" What a study is such a sermon! I
felt all the extraordinary literary skill of it, while my eyes were
still dim with tears. Diction, composition, similes, all is instructive
and precious to remember. I was astonished, shaken, taken hold of.
November 18, 1851.--The energetic subjectivity, which has faith in
itself, which does not fear to be something particular and definite
without any consciousness or shame of its subjective illusion, is
unknown to me. I am, so far as the intellectual order is concerned,
essentially objective, and my distinctive speciality, is to be able to
place myself in all points of view, to see through all eyes, to
emancipate myself, that is to say, from the individual prison. Hence
aptitude for theory and irresolution in practice; hence critical talent
and difficulty in spontaneous production. Hence, also, a continuous
uncertainty of conviction and opinion, so long as my aptitude remained
mere instinct; but now that it is conscious and possesses itself, it is
able to conclude and affirm in its turn, so that, after having brought
disquiet, it now brings peace. It says: "There is no repose for the mind
except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the
soul, except in the divine.
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