Am I in order? Alas, no!
My changeable and restless nature will torment me to the end. I shall
never see plainly what I ought to do. The love of the better will have
stood between me and the good. Yearning for the ideal will have lost me
reality. Vague aspiration and undefined desire will have been enough to
make my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductive
nature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required of
me, may not my very remorse be a mistake and a superfluity?
Scherer's phrase comes back to me, "We must accept ourselves as we are."
September 8, 1870 (_Zurich_).--All the exiles are returning to
Paris--Edgar Quinet, Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo. By the help of their
united experience will they succeed in maintaining the republic? It is
to be hoped so. But the past makes it lawful to doubt. While the
republic is in reality a fruit, the French look upon it as a
seed-sowing. Elsewhere such a form of government presupposes free men;
in France it is and must be an instrument of instruction and protection.
France has once more placed sovereignty in the hands of universal
suffrage, as though the multitude were already enlightened, judicious,
and reasonable, and now her task is to train and discipline the force
which, by a fiction, is master.
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