_Abstine et sustine_.
I must remember besides that I have faithful friends; it is better not
to torment them. The last journey is only made more painful by scenes
and lamentations: one word is worth all others--"Thy will, not mine, be
done!" Leibnitz was accompanied to the grave by his servant only. The
loneliness of the deathbed and the tomb is not an evil. The great
mystery cannot be shared. The dialogue between the soul and the King of
Terrors needs no witnesses. It is the living who cling to the thought of
last greetings. And, after all, no one knows exactly what is reserved
for him. What will be will be. We have but to say, "Amen."
February 4, 1881.--It is a strange sensation that of laying one's self
down to rest with the thought that perhaps one will never see the
morrow. Yesterday I felt it strongly, and yet here I am. Humility is
made easy by the sense of excessive frailty, but it cuts away all
ambition.
"Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensees."
A long piece of work seems absurd--one lives but from day to day.
When a man can no longer look forward in imagination to five years, a
year, a month, of free activity--when he is reduced to counting the
hours, and to seeing in the coming night the threat of an unknown
fate--it is plain that he must give up art, science, and politics, and
that he must be content to hold converse with himself, the one
possibility which is his till the end.
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