It is analytic and descriptive, but it explains
nothing, for it avoids all beginnings and processes of formation. With
it crystallization is not the mysterious act itself by which a substance
passes from the fluid state to the solid state. It is the product of
that act.
The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything appearance
is preferred to reality, the outside to the inside, the fashion to the
material, that which shines to that which profits, opinion to
conscience. That is to say, the Frenchman's center of gravity is always
outside him--he is always thinking of others, playing to the gallery. To
him individuals are so many zeros; the unit which turns them into a
number must be added from outside; it may be royalty, the writer of the
day, the favorite newspaper, or any other temporary master of fashion.
All this is probably the result of an exaggerated sociability, which
weakens the soul's forces of resistance, destroys its capacity for
investigation and personal conviction, and kills in it the worship of
the ideal.
January 27, 1875. (_Hyeres_).--The whole atmosphere has a luminous
serenity, a limpid clearness. The islands are like swans swimming in a
golden stream. Peace, splendor, boundless space!... And I meanwhile look
quietly on while the soft hours glide away.
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