The individual is then but a nothing of the third power, with a capacity
for measuring its nothingness! Thought leads to resignation. Self-doubt
leads to passivity, and passivity to servitude. From this a voluntary
submission is the only escape, that is to say, a state of dependence
religiously accepted, a vindication of ourselves as free beings, bowed
before duty only. Duty thus becomes our principle of action, our source
of energy, the guarantee of our partial independence of the world, the
condition of our dignity, the sign of our nobility. The world can
neither make me will nor make me will my duty; here I am my own and only
master, and treat with it as sovereign with sovereign. It holds my body
in its clutches; but my soul escapes and braves it. My thought and my
love, my faith and my hope, are beyond its reach. My true being, the
essence of my nature, myself, remain inviolate and inaccessible to the
world's attacks. In this respect we are greater than the universe, which
has mass and not will; we become once more independent even in relation
to the human mass, which also can destroy nothing more than our
happiness, just as the mass of the universe can destroy nothing more
than our body. Submission, then, is not defeat; on the contrary, it is
strength.
April 28, 1866.
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