"Imagine how delighted I should be, if when enjoying the delicious luxury of sunset, some bachelor of arts should say—
"'Monsieur, will you suffer me to explain how various clouds assume the colors which so vividly impress you, and with what rapidity light comes to the eye?'
"For heaven's sake let me enjoy in peace all the gifts of Providence, admire its works in the innocence of my heart, and discover by what geometrical process God has regulated the form of the globe, and to what pallet, to use the painter's phrase, he has ground his colors."
"There you express a pious and respectable sentiment, which, however, permit me to say, cannot be admitted without some qualification. We must not forget that the greatest gift with which God has endowed man is intelligence, and that one of our first duties is to attempt to develop that intelligence by means of every faculty and all the means of application with which he has endowed us."
"Good. If you were sure that you would not lose yourself amid temptation, or, if like Tobias, you had an angel to guide you in the stormy voyage you undertake. Into what derangement of pride has not man fallen, from the fabulous Prometheus, who sought to snatch fire from heaven, to the Philosophers of the eighteenth century, who extinguished fire in the lights of their reason. Prove to me that what you call human reason has in any manner purified or ennobled the moral sentiment, and I will bow myself before your logicians and rhetoricians. To what direction soever I turn I see only vain puerilities, useless labor, doubtful hypotheses, presumption and falsehood. I admit that you may count amid the multitude of books lumbering the shelves of your libraries many innocent and instructive works. Those books, however, prove your impotence.
"Act as you please, and you will never be able to develop equally the various mental powers. To expand one it is necessary to repress the others. By giving your reason the rude aliment of scholastic argument, you neglect your imagination. By illuminating your mind you overshadow your heart. You congratulate yourself at the discovery of a problem, the solution of which you have long sought for. Scientific journals become filled with numerous dissertations about it, academies decree crowns and medals to the author of the precious discovery. No one remembers, that each of these solutions breaks one of the wonderful chains of charming symbols, of naive ideas which once animated and vivified the people. That it strips it of poetry, of the emotions of the heart, and the delightful and fairy-like creations of the imagination.
"The ancients were not so learned as we, yet they were wiser. They did not explain the phenomena of nature, but described with a graceful and imposing imagery. The rainbow, reduced in our colleges to a mere conformation of matter, was the scarf of Iris; the light-footed hours preceded the car of night, and the rosy-fingered Aurora opened the horizon to permit the car of Jove to pass. When the thunder rolled, Jupiter spoke to attentive mortals. When volcanic mountains trembled, the old Titans sought to throw off the mass of rocks which weighed on them as an eternal punishment of crime. The middle age, yet more naïve and poetical, peopled the air, fields, woods, and waters with a crowd of mysterious beings who spoke to the senses and thought, and awakened in the human mind a mild sentiment of faith or healthful fear.
"Now, thanks to your haughty reason, we have banished, like idle fancies, all these creations of our forefathers. Now we know that the air has no other voice than that of the wind and tempest; that the wood has no animals other than those the structure of whom has been minutely described; that there are no fairies in the green fields, and no invisible spirits watching over the hearth and fireside. Man, relying on his reason, would be ashamed to suffer himself to be excited by tales of ghosts. He has cast aside all supernatural apprehensions; and I see the coming of the time when even Saint Nicholas will not impose on children. What have we gained by thus shaking off the network of smiling and serious fancies, which both enlivened and restrained our fancy? Are we happier, stronger, or better? Alas! for my own part, even were I to pass for a mind behind the times, I would confess that I regret those days of candid credulity in which each dark forest had its legend, every chapel its history. One of the reasons why I love the Swedes, amid whom I found a peaceful home, is, that they have not yet sacrificed to the teachings of modern times their old poetry; and that in the majority of their woodland homes are a multitude of popular songs, of traditional faiths, of domestic customs, which recall the poetic days of the middle age. Is not this true, Ebba? You know something of this matter, for you participate in my predilections in relation to them; and more than once I have seen you listen anxiously to the stories of the old women of Aland."
"Yes, father," said Ebba; who had listened with eager sympathy to the long dissertation of the old man, while Eric and Ireneus listened modestly to all he had said.
"When you give me a lesson in Swedish," said Ireneus, "will you be kind enough to add to it some of those histories, which, I assure you, interest me in no small degree?"