the ideas that reason has banished; but within the heart there is
much that reason may take to itself. And at last the heart becomes
the refuge to which reason is apt to fly, ever more and more simply,
each time that the night steals upon it; for it is to the heart as a
young, clairvoyant girl, who still at times needs advice from her
blind, but smiling, mother. There comes a moment in life when moral
beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual
beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the
greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as a
river that seeks in vain for the sea.

75. But let us exaggerate nothing when dealing with wisdom, though
it be wisdom itself. The external forces, we know, will not yield to
the righteous man; but still he is absolute lord of most of the
inner powers; and these are for ever spinning the web of nearly all
our happiness and sorrow. We have said elsewhere that the sage, as
he passes by, intervenes in countless dramas. Indeed his mere
presence suffices to arrest most of the calamities that arise from
error or evil. They cannot approach him, or even those who are near
him. A chance meeting with creature endowed with simple and loving
wisdom has stayed the hands of men who else had committed countless
acts of folly or wickedness; for in life most characters are
subordinate, and it is chance alone that determines whether the
track which they are to follow shall be that of suffering or peace.
The atmosphere around Jean-Jacques Rousseau was heavy with
lamentation and treachery, delirium, deceit, and cunning; whereas
Jean Paul moved in the midst of loyalty and nobility, the centre of
peace and love. We subdue that in others which we have learned to
subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide
circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall;