Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE VI. SINCERITY. If before now I have sufficiently brought to your minds the quality of the memories upon which we build; if we keep in mind how we work with prejudices of sight, or how often we entangle one matter of seeing or recording sight with another, it may seem that though we are always on the threshold, on the edge of originality, -- that is to say of a personal solution of all memories in a unity, -- we can each have a very little of it, to leaven the mass with; but yet that a very little of personal power will represent a great factor. In that way I could say again that all is to do over again; and again that if it happened to you to have the extreme honour of re-inventing, you will have the delight of having made in p 209 your own self the experiment of ages. Over that bridge the least variation will bring you into newer worlds. Always has man been interested in nature in a contemplative manner. I mean by nature what is outside of ourselves, man included, his meaning, his constitution, as well as the world he inhabits, its laws and its appearances. The enchantments of nature and her disillusions; the caresses and cares she has for us, her supreme indifference to our individual existence, have in turn moved the mind of man to expression. The struggles of moral good against the evil that reigns in the world; the battle of will against blind fate; the presence of the constant pain and sorrow which are the basis of life; the law of death for which everything lives, -- have in turn been spectacles to warm or chill. On this basis have rested the foundations of love and pity, of courage, of law, and of all the virtues. The contradictions of the world of existence; its over-profusion; its escaping at every point from any..."
