February 27, 1874.--Among the peoples, in whom the social gifts are the strongest, the individual fears ridicule above all things, and ridicule is the certain result of originality. No one, therefore, wishes to make a party of his own; every one wishes to be on the side of all the world. “All the world” is the greatest of powers; it is sovereign, and calls itself _we_. _We_ dress, _we_ dine, _we_ walk, _we_ go out, _we_ come in, like this, and not like that. This _we_ is always right, whatever it does. The subjects of _We_ are more prostrate than the slaves of the East before the Padishah. The good pleasure of the sovereign decides every appeal; his caprice is law. What _we_ does or says is called custom, what it thinks is called opinion, what it believes to be beautiful or good is called fashion. Among such nations as these _we_ is the brain, the conscience, the reason, the taste, and the judgment of all. The individual finds everything decided for him without his troubling about it. He is dispensed from the task of finding out anything whatever. Provided that he imitates, copies, and repeats the models furnished by _we_, he has nothing more to fear. He knows all that he need know, and has entered into salvation. April 29, 1874.--Strange reminiscence! At the end of the terrace of La Treille, on the eastern side, as I looked down the slope, it seemed to me that I saw once more in imagination a little path which existed there when I was a child, and ran through the bushy underwood, which was thicker then than it is now. It is at least forty years since this impression disappeared from my mind. The revival of an image so dead and so forgotten set me thinking. Consciousness seems to be like a book, in which the leaves turned by life successively cover and hide each other in spite of their semi-transparency; but although the book may be open at the page of the present, the wind, for a few seconds, may blow back the first pages into view.