“In the meantime,” continued Goethe, smiling, “let us remain in a state of hopeful expectation as to the condition of us Germans a century hence, and whether we shall then have advanced so far as to be no longer _savants_ and philosophers, but men.”
Now, it has occurred to me, when I recollect, that we love our children, and call them our second selves, merely because we have begotten them, that there is another kind of progeny springing from us, not less worthy of our esteem; for what we engender by the mind, the offspring of our understanding, diligence, and genius, emanates from nobler parts of us than what springs from the body, and is much more our own. We are both father and mother in this act of generation. They cost us more and bring us more honor if they have any good in them. For the value of our other children depends much more on themselves than on us; the share we have in them is very little, but of these all the beauty, grace, and excellence is ours. For in this way they are a more complete representation and copy of ourselves than the others. Plato adds that these are immortal children which truly immortalize and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, and Mino.—_Montaigne._
“The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought, And is with child of glorious, great intent, Can never rest until it forth have brought Th’ eternal brood of glory excellent.”
In my opinion the want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude. Nothing is so apt to narrow the mind; nothing produces more trifling, silly stories, mischief-making, lies, than being eternally shut up in a room with one another, reduced as the only alternative to be constantly twaddling. When everybody is occupied, we only speak when we have something to say; but when we are doing nothing, we are compelled to be always talking, and of all torments, that is the most annoying and the most dangerous.—_Rousseau_.
There was a law in the city of Athens, which gave to its citizens the power of compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased; for upon a daughter’s refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her husband, the father was empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory, this law was seldom or never put into execution, though perhaps the young ladies of that city were not unfrequently threatened by their parents with the terrors of it.