Every man is a priest, even
involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever
preaching to others; but there are priests of Baal, of Moloch, and of
all the false gods. Such is the high importance of example. Thence comes
the terrible responsibility which weighs upon us all. An evil example is
a spiritual poison: it is the proclamation of a sacrilegious faith, of
an impure God. Sin would be only an evil for him who commits it, were it
not a crime toward the weak brethren, whom it corrupts. Therefore, it
has been said: "It were better for a man not to have been born than to
offend one of these little ones."
May 6, 1852.--It is women who, like mountain flowers, mark with most
characteristic precision the gradation of social zones. The hierarchy of
classes is plainly visible among them; it is blurred in the other sex.
With women this hierarchy has the average regularity of nature; among
men we see it broken by the incalculable varieties of human freedom. The
reason is that the man on the whole, makes himself by his own activity,
and that the woman, is, on the whole, made by her situation; that the
one modifies and shapes circumstance by his own energy, while the
gentleness of the other is dominated by and reflects circumstance; so
that woman, so to speak, inclines to be species, and man to be
individual.
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