It requires time to discover the master thought of any work of real worth, in order to disclose its high morality, its art tendencies.
The maddening rule of our new mode of life being the desire to know all things as quickly as possible, we ask the author, whose motives are known beforehand, what he meant to say, or do, or prove, and in this way we think to gain time and not run the risk of “idle dreaming.”
Ah! as to dreams, shall we speak of them?—golden money, no longer current, which we scatter behind us in our haste to pursue what others are pursuing. If, by chance, we find it again, how soiled by the road’s dust it seems!
The asking of a question or two, and even the explanation of a phenomenon which is often as clear as day, can be undertaken as we hurry along, but simply to examine the “whys and wherefores” of things, or to attempt to discover the laws of facts, and group them methodically, giving the logical relation of these laws in general origins—verily, only a few vulgar slang words can express the impression made on the minds of those who wish to be considered “modern men,” with respect to these very problems of which we, of the elder generation, are so fond, and which are called by the moderns—“stuff.”
“In writing your memoirs you encourage what you appear to condemn,” people will doubtless say to me. But I condemn nothing. I simply note a state of mind and ways of life. I feel sure that if in “my time” an author’s work held the first place, and that if nowadays the author himself excites disproportionate interest, the future will establish an equilibrium between these two extremes.
If the candles of literary people of the present time are burned at both ends, it is, perhaps, because there remain few embers of the luminous torches of the past. The authors of the future will be obliged to renew their provision of wood, which must burn itself out, normally, in the middle.
However this may be, it is, perhaps, profitable to register the facts in a fleeting epoch for the use of those who are running in pursuit of an epoch which is to take its place.
Old people are fond of describing what took place in former times, and they have a real mission so to do if only they will refrain from trying to enforce upon us the superiority of the teaching of that which has disappeared, and if they will tell their story simply, leaving a younger generation to discover its lesson, and from it form conclusions.
Those of the older generation who educated us thought sentimentalism and humanity, which appeared at first brutally, and then were gloriously driven back by the Terror and the Empire, had returned again triumphantly.
Moreover, the Revolution and Bonaparte had opened our gates to a foreign influx. Our fathers gave shelter to every Utopian idea brought from Italy, Germany, Austria, and Russia. The mixture was so confusing that all manner of extravagant things sprang from it.