He allows myriads
upon myriads of suns to disport themselves in his shadow; he grants life
and consciousness to innumerable multitudes of creatures who thus
participate in being and in nature; and all these animated monads
multiply, so to speak, his divinity.
August 4, 1880.--I have read a few numbers of the _Feuille Centrale de
Zofingen_. [Footnote: The journal of a students' society, drawn from the
different cantons of Switzerland, which meets every year in the little
town of Zofingen] It is one of those perpetual new beginnings of youth
which thinks it is producing something fresh when it is only repeating
the old.
Nature is governed by continuity--the continuity of repetition; it is
like an oft-told tale, or the recurring burden of a song. The rose-trees
are never tired of rose-bearing, the birds of nest-building, young
hearts of loving, or young voices of singing the thoughts and feelings
which have served their predecessors a hundred thousand times before.
Profound monotony in universal movement--there is the simplest formula
furnished by the spectacle of the world. All circles are alike, and
every existence tends to trace its circle.
How, then, is _fastidium_ to be avoided? By shutting our eyes to the
general uniformity, by laying stress upon the small differences which
exist, and then by learning to enjoy repetition.
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