All the possible points
of view, were, so to speak, piled upon each other, and one caught
glimpses of some eccentrically across others. I was enjoying and I was
learning. Sight passed into vision without a trace of hallucination, and
the landscape was my guide, my Virgil.
All this made me very sensible of the difference between me and the
majority of travelers, all of whom have a special object, and content
themselves with one thing or with several, while I desire all or
nothing, and am forever straining toward the total, whether of all
possible objects, or of all the elements present in the reality. In
other words, what I desire is the sum of all desires, and what I seek to
know is the sum of all different kinds of knowledge. Always the
complete, the absolute; the _teres atque rotundum_, sphericity,
non-resignation.
October 27, 1853.--I thank Thee, my God, for the hour that I have just
passed in Thy presence. Thy will was clear to me; I measured my faults,
counted my griefs, and felt Thy goodness toward me. I realized my own
nothingness, Thou gavest me Thy peace. In bitterness there is sweetness;
in affliction, joy; in submission, strength; in the God who punishes,
the God who loves. To lose one's life that one may gain it, to offer it
that one may receive it, to possess nothing that one may conquer all, to
renounce self that God may give Himself to us, how impossible a problem,
and how sublime a reality! No one truly knows happiness who has not
suffered, and the redeemed are happier than the elect.
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