Such a
victory over feeling may not indeed affect those who have wronged us,
but it is a valuable piece of self-discipline. It is vulgar to be angry
on one's own account; we ought only to be angry for great causes.
Besides, the poisoned dart can only be extracted from the wound by the
balm of a silent and thoughtful charity. Why do we let human malignity
embitter us? why should ingratitude, jealousy--perfidy even--enrage us?
There is no end to recriminations, complaints, or reprisals. The
simplest plan is to blot everything out. Anger, rancor, bitterness,
trouble the soul. Every man is a dispenser of justice; but there is one
wrong that he is not bound to punish--that of which he himself is the
victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged. Fire purifies all.
"Mon ame est comme un feu qui devore et parfume
Ce qu'on jette pour le ternir."
December 27, 1880--In an article I have just read, Biedermann reproaches
Strauss with being too negative, and with having broken with
Christianity. The object to be pursued, according to him, should be the
freeing of religion from the mythological element, and the substitution
of another point of view for the antiquated dualism of orthodoxy--this
other point of view to be the victory over the world, produced by the
sense of divine sonship.
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