I am
attentively following the wave of enthusiasm which is at this moment
spreading over the north. M. Cousin has just started to study its
progress for himself, I am referring to Ronge and Czerski, whose names
you must have heard mentioned. May God pardon me for liking them, even
if they should not be pure: for what I like in them, as in all others
who have evoked my enthusiasm, is a certain standard of attractiveness
and morality which I have assigned them; in short, I admire in them my
ideal. It may be asked whether or not they come up to this standard.
That to my mind is quite a secondary matter.
Yes, Germany delights me, not so much in her scientific as in her
moral aspect. The _morale_ of Kant is far superior to all his logic
and intellectual philosophy, and our French writers have never alluded
to it. This is only natural, for the men of our day have no moral
sense. France seems to me every day more devoid of any part in the
great work of renovating the life of humanity. A dry, anti-critical,
barren, and petty orthodoxy, of the St. Sulpice type; a hollow and
superficial imitation full of affectation and exaggeration, like
Neo-Catholicism; and an arid and heartless philosophy, crabbed and
disdainful, like the University, make up the sum of French culture.
Jesus Christ is nowhere to be found. I have been inclined to think
that He would come to us from Germany; not that I suppose He would be
an individual, but a spirit. And when we use the word Jesus Christ we
mean, no doubt, a certain spirit rather than an individual, and that
is the Gospel.
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