for him." I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my dear Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be that your body and my body shall eat together at one table: there is what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of

Paul.

ORI A ORI, THAT IS TO SAY, RUI

60 TO LUCIEN ANATOLE PRÉVOST-PARADOL1

MY

March 20, 1849

Y DEAR PRÉVOST—It is indeed for me to apologize! I ought to have answered you a week ago, and I have not been able to do so, having, like you, an accumulation of work of all kinds that I cannot get through. First, there are all the regular, official papers on Greek, Philosophy, History, Latin, and French; then preparation for my Licentiate, and the reading up of thirty or forty difficult authors that we shall have to discourse about; lastly, all my private studies in Literature, History, and Philosophy. All this is going on at once, and I always have a quantity of things in hand; I have drawn up a big plan of study, and I intend to work out a great part of it during these three years at the École; I shall complete it later on. I mean to be a philosopher; and, now that you understand the full sense of the word, you can see what a series of reflections and what a mass of knowledge are necessary to me. If I only wished to pass an examination or to accept a professorship, I should not need to take much trouble; it would be sufficient to have a certain amount of reading and a strict adherence to doctrine, together with a complete ignorance of Modern Science and Philosophy. But, as I would rather drown myself than be reduced to mere potboiling-as I am studying for the sake of knowledge, and not merely in order to earn my living-I want my instruction to be complete. I am thus thrown into all kinds of research, and shall be obliged,

1 From the Life and Letters of H. Taine, translated from the French by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. Reprinted with the permission of Constable and Company, Limited.-At the time of writing this letter Taine was not yet twenty-one years old.

when I leave the École, to study Social Science, Political Economy, and Physical Science. Life is long-this is the use I shall make of it; but my private cogitations take up most of my time; one must seek in order to understand-in order to believe in Philosophy one must go through it all for oneself, and repeat the same discoveries that others have made before you. You know this by experience, and if you are now adrift on your unfortunate skepticism, it is because you have looked upon philosophers as advocates or comedians; as they all have great genius, they reason forcibly and convincingly, and present to you beautiful and poetical opinions. Hence you have admitted the most contrary systems, just as, when listening disinterestedly to rival speakers of great eloquence, we are swayed by each of them in turn and end by believing in neither. But, believe me, I would rather have your coldness, your disgust, your skepticism, and your ambition than your former blind, unreasoning, passionate, and inflexible convictions; the result will be that you will not take life seriously, and that you will make it sweeter and more agreeable, until the day will come when you will tire of this floating and uncertain state, and will decide to seek for firm ground, and rest on it at last.

And let me tell you, you are nearer to me now than before: the property of Thought is to pacify the mind, and, by elevating it, to bestów on it Equanimity. That is what has be fallen me; like you, I have acquired great contempt for mankind, whilst preserving a great admiration for human nature. I consider men ridiculous, impotent, and passionate like children, stupid and vain, and especially silly in being full of prejudices. Whilst preserving the outward forms of politeness, I laugh to myself to see how ugly and idiotic they are. Is not that what you felt last year? You used to tell me so, and I did not listen to you, for I was lost in the contempla

tion of Man in himself. I am now where you are, but I have kept my former opinions on human nature and my deep love for a thing so beautiful, so vast, These two feelings are by no means irreconcilable, for it is one more reason for looking down on men to see that, with such a perfect essence, they only succeed in being fools, frenzied lunatics, or knaves,

It follows that my love, drawing back from particular objects, tends towards general or ideal things, such as works of Art, Humanity as a whole, and especially Nature. I felt this more strongly yesterday than I have ever done. I was at the Jardin des Plantes, in a deserted corner, and I was gazing at a slope covered with young wild grasses in bloom; the sun shone through them, and I could see the inner life circulating in the slight tissues and raising the strong stalks; the wind blew and swayed all that harvest of thick growing blades, of a marvelous beauty and transparency. I felt my heart beating, and my whole soul throbbing with love for that great, strange, and beautiful Being which we call Nature. I loved her, I love her now, I felt and saw her everywhere: in the luminous sky, in the pure air, in that forest of living animated plants, and especially in the quick and uncertain breath of the spring breezes. Oh! why was I not away from dusty Paris, away in the free and lonely country! Why do I love Nature so? Why, when I see her, am I moved like a lover in the presence of his mistress? Why am I filled with a calm and perfect joy? Are Nature and Man but one thing? Do they,, at certain moments, return to the primitive and absolute unity from which, alas for them! they have departed? For my part, I think Nature more beautiful than Woman; the rosy tints of the morning sky seem to me more delicate than the lovely coloring of the fairest cheek; the ripples of water running over rocks and weeds are to me as expressive as the changes of the most mobile countenance, What more shall

I

I tell you? When I perceive a whole landscape, with its rivers, its woods, its hills and dales, its sounds and colorings, I feel the presence of a Being absolutely One and real; all that is One, and this infinite and accessible grandeur is the Supreme Beauty. There are some barbarians who see in all this but a spectacle, a phantasmagoria which God displays to amuse Mankind, a composite of matter and movement without forces of its own, without veritable reality-and they call themselves artists!!

.

Seriously, my dear fellow, can you live a political life, or what is called real life, when you have such thoughts before you? Can you love with your whole soul anything but those perfect things which Science and inward Thought reveal to us? And do you feel that, when we give this love to a finite and real creature, we only give it in fancy, imagining that that being is perfect, and clothing it with all the excellence which we see in the Divine model? I do not know if the same process takes place in you as in me, but I confess that the infinite love which, like all men, I carry in the bottom of my heart, always finds itself arrested in its flight when directed towards finite realizations of the perfect Essence; I know not what unfortunate perspicacity shows me that they lack this or that, and that they therefore cannot become in every point an object of love; I say the same of myself, and I feel that I, too, do not deserve to be completely loved.

I am confessing to you a crowd of thoughts and feelings that I should not dare tell anyone else lest I be considered crazy. But with you I dare everything; tell me whether I am keeping within the bounds, not of common sense (I know I am not, and it does not afflict), but within those of good sense (which is more serious). You are more capable than another of judging, since you do not believe in Philosophy and can look upon it without being dazzled. Besides, all this