No, no, no! Myself only, and that is enough! Myself by
negation, by ugliness, by grimace and irony! Myself, in my caprice, in
my independence, in my irresponsible sovereignty; myself, set free by
laughter, free as the demons are, and exulting in my freedom; I, master
of myself, invincible and self-sufficient, living for this one time yet
by and for myself! This is what seems to me at the bottom of this
merry-making. One hears in it an echo of Satan, the temptation to make
self the center of all things, to be like an Elohim, the worst and last
revolt of man. It means also, perhaps, some rapid perception of what is
absolute in personality, some rough exaltation of the subject, the
individual, who thus claims, by abasing them, the rights of subjective
existence. If so, it is the caricature of our most precious privilege,
the parody of our apotheosis, a vulgarizing of our highest greatness.
Shout away, then, drunkards! Your ignoble concert, with all its
repulsive vulgarity, still reveals to us, without knowing it, something
of the majesty of life and the sovereign power of the soul.
September 15, 1857.--I have just finished Sismondi's journal and
correspondence. Sismondi is essentially the honest man, conscientious,
upright, respectable, the friend of the public good and the devoted
upholder of a great cause, the amelioration of the common lot of men.
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