e perhaps known sorrows that you have never suffered, and yet
I believe and hope, and still bless God.

When English and German ideas had passed thus over our heads there
ensued disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion.
For to formulate general ideas is to change saltpetre into powder, and
the Homeric brain of the great Goethe had sucked up, as an alembic, all
the juice of the forbidden fruit. Those who did not read him, did not
believe it, knew nothing of it. Poor creatures! The explosion carried
them away like grains of dust into the abyss of universal doubt.

It was a denial of all heavenly and earthly facts that might be termed
disenchantment, or if you will, despair; as if humanity in lethargy had
been pronounced dead by those who felt its pulse. Like a soldier who is
asked: "In what do you believe?" and who replies: "In myself," so the
youth of France, hearing that question, replied: "In nothing."

Then formed two camps: on one side the exalted spirits, sufferers, all
the expansive souls who yearned toward the infinite, bowed their heads
and wept; they wrapped themselves in unhealthful dreams and nothing
could be seen but broken reeds in an ocean of bitterness. On the other
side the materialists remained erect, inflexible, in the midst of
positive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money they had
acquired. It was but a sob and a burst of laughter, the one coming from
the soul, the other from the body.

This is what the soul said:

"Alas! Alas! religion has departed; the clouds of heaven fall in rain;
we have no longer either hope or expectation, not even two little pieces
of black wood in the shape of a cross before which to clasp our hands.
The star of the future is loath to appear; it can not rise above the
horizon; it is enveloped in clouds, and like the sun in winter its disc
is the color of blood, as in '93. There is no more love, no more glory.
What heavy darkness over all the earth! And death will come ere the day
breaks."

This is what the body said:

"Man is here below to satisfy his senses; he has more or less of white
or yellow metal, by which he merits more or less esteem. To eat, to
drink, and to sleep, that is life. As for the bonds which exist between
men, friendship consists in loaning money; but one rarely has a friend
whom he loves enough for that. Kinship determines inheritance; love is
an exercise of the body; the only intellectual joy is vanity."

L