Imagination transforms him, and he is able to play the most varied parts
with credit, among them even that of the pure logician. But as the
imagination is his intellectual axis--his master faculty--he is, as it
were, in all his works only half sincere, only half in earnest. We feel
that his talent has laid him the wager of Carneades; it will lose no
cause, however bad, as soon as the point of honor Is engaged. It is
indeed the temptation of all talent to subordinate things to itself and
not itself to things; to conquer for the sake of conquest, and to put
self-love in the place of conscience. Talent is glad enough, no doubt,
to triumph in a good cause; but it easily becomes a free lance, content,
whatever the cause, so long as victory follows its banner. I do not know
even whether success in a weak and bad cause is not the most flattering
for talent, which then divides the honors of its triumph with nothing
and no one.
Paradox is the delight of clever people and the joy of talent. It is so
pleasant to pit one's self against the world, and to overbear mere
commonplace good sense and vulgar platitudes! Talent and love of truth
are then not identical; their tendencies and their paths are different.
In order to make talent obey when its instinct is rather to command, a
vigilant moral sense and great energy of character are needed.
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