Our friend Dournay's uncle is dead; he was ill, and the news of the assassination of President Lincoln killed him.
Eric, Manna, and their child are going home.
[Eric to Professor Einsiedel.]
What I am now interested in arranging is not the filling out of my own life, the new calling into which I have entered. It is the torment attendant on the self-renovation of the modern mind, that doubts and questions immediately set themselves in opposition to action.
I want to establish a refuge for laborers in the intellectual field, but the question comes up to me:—
Is not this a direct contradiction to the spirit of this modern age?
Is not the desire for solitude a necessary part of that free individual life which is our noblest characteristic?
Could I imagine a Lessing, in his old age, in this house of refuge which I would found?
Is not the quiet communion with one's self, which is our most precious treasure, destroyed or banished by living in such close relations with others?
I think that it is not, and only those who pine for rest shall enter the home.