So that an analysis of the national type of gentlemen reveals to us the
nature and the history of the nation, as the fruit reveals the tree.
April 7, 1866.--If philosophy is the art of understanding, it is evident
that it must begin by saturating itself with facts and realities, and
that premature abstraction kills it, just as the abuse of fasting
destroys the body at the age of growth. Besides, we only understand that
which is already within us. To understand is to possess the thing
understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence. Instead, then,
of first dismembering and dissecting the object to be conceived, we
should begin by laying hold of it in its _ensemble_, then in its
formation, last of all in its parts. The procedure is the same, whether
we study a watch or a plant, a work of art or a character. We must
study, respect, and question what we want to know, instead of massacring
it. We must assimilate ourselves to things and surrender ourselves to
them; we must open our minds with docility to their influence, and steep
ourselves in their spirit and their distinctive form, before we offer
violence to them by dissecting them.
April 14, 1866.--Panic, confusion, _sauve qui peut_ on the Bourse at
Paris. In our epoch of individualism, and of "each man for himself and
God for all," the movements of the public funds are all that now
represent to us the beat of the common heart.
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