In order for the law of progress to exist, every one must wish to create it; that is, when every individual applies himself to progress, then, and only then, humanity will be in progress.
This hypothesis serves to explain the identity of two contradictory ideas, free will and predestination.—Not only is there, in the case of progress, identity of free will and predestination, but that identity has always existed. That identity is history, the history of nations and of men.
LXXII
Hygiene. Projects.—The more one wills, the better one wills.
The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fertile one grows.
Morally as physically, I have always had the sensation of the gulf, not only of the gulf of sleep, but the gulf of action, of revery, of memory, of desire, of regret, of remorse, of beauty, of number, etc.
I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. Now, I always have vertigo, and to-day, January 23, 1862, I felt a strange warning. I felt pass over me a gust from the wing of imbecility.
LXXIII
How many presentiments and signs already sent by God, that it is high time to act, to regard the present moment as the most important moment, and to make my perpetual joy of my usual torment, that is, of work!