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the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, and desire, but no serene command of beauty. The south, more artistic, more self-satisfied, more capable of execution, rests idly in the sense of its own power to achieve. On one side you have ideas, on the other side talent. The realm of Germany is beyond the clouds; that of the southern peoples is on this earth. The Germanic race thinks and feels; the Southerners feel and express; the Anglo-Saxons will and do. To know, to feel, to act, there you have the trio of Germany, Italy, England. France formulates, speaks, decides, and laughs. Thought, talent, will, speech; or, in other words, science, art, action, proselytism. So the parts of the quartet are assigned.

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21st July 1856.- Mit Sack und Pack here I am back again in my town rooms. I have said good-bye to my friends and my country joys, to verdure, flowers, and happiness. Why did I leave them after all? The reason I gave myself was that I was anxious about my poor uncle, who is ill But at bottom are there not other reasons? Yes, several. There is the fear of making myself a burden upon the two or three

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families of friends who show me incessant kindness, for which I can make no return. There are my books, which call me back. There is the wish to keep faith with myself. But all that would be nothing, I think, without another instinct the instinct of the wandering Jew, which snatches from me the cup I have but just raised to my lips, which forbids me any prolonged enjoyment, and cries, Go forward! Let there be no falling asleep, no stopping, no attaching yourself to this or that!' This restless feeling is not the need of change. It is rather the fear of what I love, the mistrust of what charms me, the unrest of happiness. What a bizarre tendency, and what a strange nature! — not to be able to enjoy anything simply, naïvely, without scruple, to feel a force upon one impelling one to leave the table, for fear the meal should come to an end. Contradiction and mystery! not to use, for fear of abusing; to think oneself obliged to go, not because one has had enough, but because one has stayed a while. I am indeed always the same : the being who wanders when he need not, the voluntary exile, the eternal traveller, the man incapable of repose, who, driven on by an inward voice, builds nowhere,

buys and labours nowhere, but passes, looks, camps, and goes. And is there not another reason for all this restlessness, in a certain sense of void of incessant pursuit of some thing wanting? - of longing for a truer peace and a more entire satisfaction? Neighbours, friends, relations, I love them all; and so long as these affections are active, they leave in me no room for a sense of want. But yet they do not fill my heart; and that is why they have no power to fix it. I am always waiting for the woman and the work which shall be capable of taking entire possession of my soul, and of becoming my end and aim.

'Promenant par tout séjour
Le deuil que tu cèles,
Psyché-papillon, un jour
Puisses-tu trouver l'amour
Et perdre tes ailes !'

I have not given away my heart: hence this restlessness of spirit. I will not let it be taken captive by that which cannot fill and satisfy it; hence this instinct of pitiless detachment from all that charms me without permanently binding me; so that it seems as if my love of movement, which looks so like inconstancy, was at bottom

only a perpetual search, a hope, a desire, and a care, the malady of the ideal.

Life indeed must always be a compromise between common sense and the ideal, the one abating nothing of its demands, the other accommodating itself to what is practicable and real. But marriage by common sense! - arrived at by a bargain! Can it be anything but a profanation ? On the other hand, is that not a vicious ideal which hinders life from completing itself, and destroys the family in germ ? Is there not too much of pride in my ideal,- pride which will not accept the common destiny? . . .

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Noon. I have been dreaming — my head in my hands. About what? About happiness. I have, as it were, been asleep on the fatherly breast of God. His will be done!

3d August 1856. A delightful Sunday afternoon at Pressy. Returned late, under a great sky magnificently starred, with summer lightning playing from a point behind the Jura. Drunk with poetry, and overwhelmed by sensation after sensation, I came back slowly, blessing the God of life,

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and plunged in the joy of the infinite. One thing only I lacked, a soul with whom to share it all- for emotion and enthusiasm overflowed, like water from a full cup. milky way, the great black poplars, the ripple of the waves, the shooting stars, distant songs, the lamp-lit town, all spoke to me in the language of poetry. I felt myself almost a poet. The wrinkles of science disappeared under the magic breath of admiration; the old elasticity of soul, trustful, free, and living, was mine once more. was once more young, capable of self-abandonment and of love. All my barrenness had disappeared; the heavenly dew had fertilised the dead and gnarled stick; it began to be green and flower again. My God, how wretched should we be without beauty! But with it, everything is born afresh in us; the senses, the heart, imagination, reason, will, come together like the dead bones of the prophet, and become one single and self-same energy. What is happiness if it is not this plenitude of existence, this close union with the universal and divine life? I have been happy a whole half day, and I have been brooding over my joy, steeping myself in it to the very depths of consciousness.

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