July 13, 1869.--Lamennais, Heine--the one the victim of a mistaken
vocation, the other of a tormenting craving to astonish and mystify his
kind. The first was wanting in common sense; the second was wanting in
seriousness. The Frenchman was violent, arbitrary, domineering; the
German was a jesting Mephistopheles, with a horror of Philistinism. The
Breton was all passion and melancholy; the Hamburger all fancy and
satire. Neither developed freely nor normally. Both of them, because of
an initial mistake, threw themselves into an endless quarrel with the
world. Both were revolutionists. They were not fighting for the good
cause, for impersonal truth; both were rather the champions of their own
pride. Both suffered greatly, and died isolated, repudiated, and
reviled. Men of magnificent talents, both of them, but men of small
wisdom, who did more harm than good to themselves and to others! It is a
lamentable existence which wears itself out in maintaining a first
antagonism, or a first blunder. The greater a man's intellectual power,
the more dangerous is it for him to make a false start and to begin life
badly.
July 20, 1869.--I have been reading over again five or six chapters, here
and there, of Renan's "St. Paul." Analyzed to the bottom, the writer is
a freethinker, but a free thinker whose flexible imagination still
allows him the delicate epicurism of religious emotion.
Pages:
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391