When English and German ideas passed thus over our heads there ensued
disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion. For to
formulate general ideas is to change saltpeter 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 degeneration of all things of heaven and of earth that might be
termed disenchantment, or if you preferred, despair; as if humanity in
lethargy had been pronounced dead by those who held its place. Like a
soldier who was asked: "In what do you believe?" and who replied: "In
myself." Thus the youth of France, hearing that question, replied: "In
nothing."
Then they formed into two camps: on one side the exalted spirits,
sufferers, all the expansive souls who had need of the infinite, bowed
their heads and wept; they wrapt themselves in unhealthy dreams and there
could be seen nothing but broken reeds on an ocean of bitterness. On the
other side the men of the flesh remained standing, inflexible in the
midst of positive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money
they had acquired. It was only a sob and a burst of laughter, the one
coming from the soul, the other from the body.
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