“You and I,” said H. G., yesterday, “are alike in this:—both of us so abhor injustice, that we are ready to fight it with a broomstick if we can find nothing better!”
“The wise only _possess_ ideas—the greater part of mankind are _possessed by_ them. When once the mind, in despite of the remonstrating conscience, has abandoned its free power to a haunting impulse or idea, then whatever tends to give depth and vividness to this idea or indefinite imagination, increases its despotism, and in the same proportion renders the reason and free will ineffectual.” This paragraph from Coleridge sounds like a _truism_ until we have felt its _truth_.
“La Volonté, en se déréglant, devient passion; cette passion continuée se change en habitude, et faute de résister à cette habitude elle se transforme en besoin.”—_St. Augustin_. Which may be rendered—“out of the unregulated will, springs _passion_, out of passion gratified, _habit_; out of habits unresisted, _necessity_.” This, also, is one of the truths which become, from the impossibility of disputing or refuting them, _truisms_—and little regarded, till the truth makes itself felt.
I wish I could realise what you call my “_grand_ idea of being independent of the absent.” I have not a friend worthy the name, whose absence is not pain and dread to me;—death itself is terrible only as it is absence. At some moments, if I could, I would cease to love those who are absent from me, or to speak more correctly, those whose path in life diverges from mine—whose dwelling house is far off;—with whom I am united in the strongest bonds of sympathy while separated by duties and interests by space and time. The presence of those whom we love is as a double life; absence, in its anxious longing, and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.
“La mort de nos amis ne compte pas du moment où ils meurent, mais de celui où nous cessons de vivre avec eux;” or, it might rather be said, _pour eux_; but I think this arises from a want either of _faith_ or _faithfulness_.
“La peur des morts est une abominable faiblesse! c’est la plus commune et la plus barbare des profanations; _les mères ne la connaissent pas_!”—And why? Because the most _faithful_ love is the love of the mother for her child.