ive a life of nature alone, must withdraw himself
from the protection of morality, I did not fully desire either the one
or the other; hence I was crushed and shattered._

My father's last action was right. He avenged the moral law, which is
just as human as the law of nature. The animal world knows neither
father nor mother, so soon as the young is able to take care of itself.
The human world does know them and must hold them sacred.

I see it all quite clearly. My sufferings and my expiation are
deserved. I was a thief! I stole the highest treasures of all:
confidence, love, honor, respect, splendor.

How noble and exalted the tender souls appear to themselves when a poor
rogue is sent to jail for having committed a theft! But what are all
possessions which can be carried away, when compared with those that
are intangible!

Those who are summoned to the bar of justice are not always the basest
of mankind.

I acknowledge my sin, and my repentance is sincere.

My fatal sin, the sin for which I now atone, was that I dissembled,
that I denied and extenuated that which I represented to myself as a
natural right. Against the queen, I have sinned worst of all. To me,
she represents that moral order which I violated and yet wished to
enjoy.

To you, O queen, to you--lovely, good, and deeply injured one--do I
confess all this!

If I die before you--and I hope that I may--these pages are to be given
to you.

*

We cannot take nature for our only guide. He who follows its law has no
share, no inheritance in the world of history. He knows nothing of the
beings who lived before him, and who helped to make the world what it
is. With him, the world is barren; with him, it dies. He who follows
naught but nature's law and persuades himself that he is thus doing
right, denies humanity and, at the same time, denies that the human
race has a history which is not represented by himself alone, but has
existed before him and now exists without him. In spite of gloss and
varnish, he who denies humanity is but a savage. He stands without the
pale of civilization. All that he does, or wears, or enjoys, of the
fruits of culture, is but a theft. He should sing no song but that
which is natural to him, like the bird which brings its plumage and its
song into the world with it, and has no special garb or tones; for
there all is species, all is the law of nature.

In this alone lies the truth.