August 9, 1862.--Life, which seeks its own continuance, tends to repair
itself without our help. It mends its spider's webs when they have been
torn; it re-establishes in us the conditions of health, and itself heals
the injuries inflicted upon it; it binds the bandage again upon our
eyes, brings back hope into our hearts, breathes health once more into
our organs, and regilds the dream of our imagination. But for this,
experience would have hopelessly withered and faded us long before the
time, and the youth would be older than the centenarian. The wise part
of us, then, is that which is unconscious of itself; and what is most
reasonable in man are those elements in him which do not reason.
Instinct, nature, a divine, an impersonal activity, heal in us the
wounds made by our own follies; the invisible _genius_ of our life is
never tired of providing material for the prodigalities of the self. The
essential, maternal basis of our conscious life, is therefore that
unconscious life which we perceive no more than the outer hemisphere of
the moon perceives the earth, while all the time indissolubly and
eternally bound to it. It is our [Greek: antichoon], to speak with
Pythagoras.
November 7, 1862.--How malign, infectious, and unwholesome is the
eternal smile of that indifferent criticism, that attitude of ironical
contemplation, which corrodes and demolishes everything, that mocking
pitiless temper, which holds itself aloof from every personal duty and
every vulnerable affection, and cares only to understand without
committing itself to action! Criticism become a habit, a fashion, and a
system, means the destruction of moral energy, of faith, and of all
spiritual force.
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