The crowd
counts only as a massive elementary force--why? because its constituent
parts are individually insignificant: they are all like each other, and
we add them up like the molecules of water in a river, gauging them by
the fathom instead of appreciating them as individuals. Such men are
reckoned and weighed merely as so many bodies: they have never been
individualized by conscience, after the manner of souls.
He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to
higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions--such a man is a
mere article of the world's furniture--a thing moved, instead of a
living and moving being--an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner
life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient
servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of
the air in motion.
January 21, 1866.--This evening after supper I did not know whither to
betake my solitary self. I was hungry for conversation, society,
exchange of ideas. It occurred to me to go and see our friends, the
----s; they were at supper. Afterward we went into the _salon_: mother
and daughter sat down to the piano and sang a duet by Boieldieu. The
ivory keys of the old grand piano, which the mother had played on before
her marriage, and which has followed and translated into music the
varying fortunes of the family, were a little loose and jingling; but
the poetry of the past sang in this faithful old servant, which had been
a friend in trouble, a companion in vigils, and the echo of a lifetime
of duty, affection, piety and virtue.
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