Wisdom and Destiny by Maurice Maeterlinck
page 79 of 165 (47%)
page 79 of 165 (47%)
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life. It cannot be harmful for us to acknowledge at times that
action begins with reality only, though our thoughts be never so large and disinterested and admirable in themselves. 'For all that goes to build up what is truly our destiny is contained in those of our thoughts which, hurried along by the mass of ideas still obscure, indistinct, incomplete, have had strength sufficient--or been forced, it may be--to turn into facts, into gestures, into feelings and habits. We do not imply by this that the other thoughts should be neglected. Those that surround our actual life may perhaps be compared with an army besieging a city. The city once taken, the bulk of the troops would probably not be permitted to pass through the gates. Admission would be doubtless withheld from the irregular part of the army--barbarians, mercenaries, all those, in a word, whose natural tendencies would lead them to drunkenness, pillage, or bloodshed. And it might also very well happen that fully two-thirds of the troops would have taken no part in the final decisive battle. But there often is value in forces that appear to be useless; and the city would evidently not have yielded to panic and thrown open her gates, had the well-disciplined force at the foot of the walls not been flanked by the hordes in the valley. So is it in moral life, too. Those thoughts are not wholly vain that have been unable to touch our actual life; they have helped on, supported, the others; yet is it these others alone that have fully accomplished their mission And therefore does it behove us to have in our service, drawn up in front of the crowded ranks of our sad and bewildered thoughts, a group of ideas more human and confident, ready at all times to penetrate vigorously into life. 61. Even when our endeavour to emerge from reality is due to the purest desire for immaterial good, one gesture must still be worth |
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