But I have also
discovered some differences which cheer and console me. This nature is,
as it were, only one of the men which exist in me. It is one of my
departments. It is not the whole of my territory, the whole of my inner
kingdom. Intellectually, I am more objective and more constructive; my
horizon is vaster; I have seen much more of men, things, countries,
peoples and books; I have a greater mass of experiences--in a word, I
feel that I have more culture, greater wealth, range, and freedom of
mind, in spite of my wants, my limits, and my weaknesses. Why does Maine
de Biran make _will_ the whole of man? Perhaps because he had too little
will. A man esteems most highly what he himself lacks, and exaggerates
what he longs to possess. Another incapable of thought, and meditation,
would have made self-consciousness the supreme thing. Only the totality
of things has an objective value. As soon as one isolates a part from
the whole, as soon as one chooses, the choice is involuntarily and
instinctively dictated by subjective inclinations which obey one or
other of the two opposing laws, the attraction of similars or the
affinity of contraries.
Five o'clock.--The morning has passed like a dream. I went on with the
journal of Maine de Biran down to the end of 1817.
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