Well, what then? Isolate if you can, the fire from its smoke. It is a
divine law that you are tracing, and therefore good. The woman
preserves; she is tradition as the man is progress. And if there is no
family and no humanity without the two sexes, without these two forces
there is no history.
May 14, 1852. (Lancy.)--Yesterday I was full of the philosophy of joy,
of youth, of the spring, which smiles and the roses which intoxicate; I
preached the doctrine of strength, and I forgot that, tried and
afflicted like the two friends with whom I was walking, I should
probably have reasoned and felt as they did.
Our systems, it has been said, are the expression of our character, or
the theory of our situation, that is to say, we like to think of what
has been given as having been acquired, we take our nature for our own
work, and our lot in life for our own conquest, an illusion born of
vanity and also of the craving for liberty. We are unwilling to be the
product of circumstances, or the mere expansion of an inner germ. And
yet we have received everything, and the part which is really ours, is
small indeed, for it is mostly made up of negation, resistance, faults.
We receive everything, both life and happiness; but the _manner_ in
which we receive, this is what is still ours.
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