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316 GERMAN LITERATURE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
No. Iii. As An Instance Of The Evil Whic...
thrown overboard , and tlie equilibrium is no longer maintained . Cicero was wont to say , that all dreams were but another death as
opposed to activity . And any man who entirely surrenders his volition , and -without troubling himself to exert his judgment allows
his thoughts to nit through his mind without connexion in motley disorder , becomes a day-dreamer : the condition of Ms mind differs
very little from actual sleep-dreaming . The theories of such a man are of little value to the worldfor his truth is merely subjective .
, He may be a clever exponent of the voixs interieures , but is certainly nothing more . Yet in ancient times the speculative man
who scorned Ms physical nature as degrading and ignoble , whilst Ms spirit wandered unchecked amongst fancies and hypotheses
, required at last to be convinced that these -were unrealities . He came to take Ms dreams for truth , and to be doubtful which was
the real and which the ideal . Nor is this even now an uncommon case .
One word to those mothers who have to execute the difficult task of educating children whom circumstances may reduce to the
necessity of earning their own living in after life . Let these children at least be exempt from the example of endeavoring to surpass
their neighbors in that love of display or entertainment beyond legitimate meanswhich is a guilty form of self-indulgence in tMs
, age . Dignified simplicity is better than showy splendor . And againmany a one in middle ageor the decline of lifelearns to
, , , look upon human society as a great conspiracy divided against itself , or has his best instincts withered and his affections dried up
because he has an unhealthy longing for pre-eminence amongst others , or expects too much from his fellow-men . Prudence may
remedy some of these evils . Youth , like spring , is full of sweet promises and glad hopes . It trusts and fears notMng ; and the
young girl ( who has just emerged from the season of childhood ) looks too confidingly in every faceas if she took it for her mother ' s .
There is something very pleasant , in this awakening , like the first Adam , to the consciousness of strength , in this standing between
worlds of wonder and gazing at the glories of creation in the first culmination of intellectual power . The spirits are then elasticfor
, they have not yielded to the pressure of conventionality . What matter that fate is veiled ? It is as the early morning mist which
has spread like silver tissue over hill and plain , and there is the pleasant flutterthe joyous tremor of expectationas youth hastens
onward to the , future , and will not believe it can , meet with disappointment . Nor need disappointment ever really come if the
lesson be once learnt , that true happiness is not dependent on our selfish pleasure ; that all work , all love must ( as it has been said )
be either centrifugal , or centripetal , and that anything noble or good must be performed disinterestedly . And to many natures
there is real delight in earnest employment . Wine that has been
standing still , ( as Goethe says , ) always leaves lees in the cask . So
316 German Literature.
316 GERMAN LITERATURE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1862, page 316, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071862/page/28/
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