[4] Drive away nature, and it gallops back again. Lafontaine has said the same thing: “Shut the door against its nose, and it will return by the window.”
[5] J. J. Rousseau, Emile.
[6] Kant, Doctrine de la vertu. French translation of J. Barni, p. 171.
[7] Kant is wrong in rejecting these two maxims, interpreting them in the sense we have just refuted.
[9] It would seem here that negative gratitude becomes confounded with negative ingratitude; the one doing no harm, the other doing no good; it would seem as one and the same condition, wherein neither harm nor good is done; but the distinction exists nevertheless; for the question, on the one hand, is to do no harm when tempted to do some, and on the other, not to do any good when there is an occasion for it. For example, he who despoils others, but abstains before his benefactor, experiences a certain degree of gratitude, and he who does good to his friends and flatterers around him, and does not do any to his benefactor, is already ungrateful.
[10] These questions will be examined more in detail in the next chapter.
[11] See chapter IV.
[12] Lawyers make a distinction between possession and property. The first consists simply in having the object in use; the second, in enjoying its exclusive use, even if the object were not naturally in one’s hands.
[13] Victor Cousin, The True, the Beautiful, and the Good (lectures xxi. and xxii.).