I pity, and I am afraid of my pity, for I feel
how near I am to the same evils and the same faults....
Ernest Naville's introductory essay is full of interest, written in a
serious and noble style; but it is almost as sad as it is ripe and
mature. What displeases me in it a little is its exaggeration of the
merits of Biran. For the rest, the small critical impatience which the
volume has stirred in me will be gone by to-morrow. Maine de Biran is an
important link in the French literary tradition. It is from him that our
Swiss critics descend, Naville father and son, Secretan. He is the
source of our best contemporary psychology, for Stapfer, Royer-Collard,
and Cousin called him their master, and Ampere, his junior by nine
years, was his friend.
July 25, 1857. (Vandoeuvres).--At ten o'clock this evening, under a
starlit sky, a group of rustics under the windows of the salon employed
themselves in shouting disagreeable songs. Why is it that this tuneless
shrieking of false notes and scoffing words delights these people? Why
is it that this ostentatious parade of ugliness, this jarring vulgarity
and grimacing is their way of finding expression and expansion in the
great solitary and tranquil night?
Why? Because of a sad and secret instinct. Because of the need they have
of realizing themselves as individuals, of asserting themselves
exclusively, egotistically, idolatrously--opposing the self in them to
everything else, placing it in harsh contrast with the nature which
enwraps us, with the poetry which raises us above ourselves, with the
harmony which binds us to others, with the adoration which carries us
toward God.
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