How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love,
the rational one reason? Who has not experienced the overwhelming
power of melody? And what else is the power of melody but the power
of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; melody is audible
feeling--feeling communicating itself. Who has not experienced the
power of love, or at least heard of it? Which is the stronger--love
or the individual man? Is it man that possesses love, or is it not
much rather love that possesses man? When love impels a man to suffer
death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power
his own individual power, or is it not rather the power of love? And
who that ever truly thought has not experienced that quiet, subtle
power--the power of thought? When thou sinkest into deep reflection,
forgetting thyself and what is around thee, dost thou govern reason,
or is it not reason which governs and absorbs thee? Scientific
enthusiasm--is it not the most glorious triumph of intellect over
thee? The desire of knowledge--is it not a simply irresistible, and
all-conquering power? And when thou suppressest a passion, renouncest a
habit, in short, achievest a victory over thyself, is this victorious
power thy own personal power, or is it not rather the energy of will,
the force of morality, which seizes the mastery of thee, and fills
thee with indignation against thyself and thy individual weaknesses?
Man is nothing without an object. The great models of humanity,
such men as reveal to us what man is capable of, have attested the
truth of this proposition by their lives. They had only one dominant
passion--the realisation of the aim which was the essential object
of their activity. But the object to which a subject essentially,
necessarily relates, is nothing else than this subject's own, but
objective, nature. If it be an object common to several individuals of
the same species, but under various conditions, it is still, at least
as to the form under which it presents itself to each of them according
to their respective modifications, their own, but objective, nature.
Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but it is an object
to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus, under other conditions
than to the Earth. Each planet has its own sun. The Sun which lights
and warms Uranus has no physical (only an astronomical, scientific)
existence for the Earth; and not only does the Sun appear different,
but it really is another sun on Uranus than on the Earth. The relation
of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the same time a relation of
the Earth to itself, or to its own nature, for the measure of the
size and of the intensity of light which the Sun possesses as the
object of the Earth is the measure of the distance which determines
the peculiar nature of the Earth. Hence each planet has in its sun
the mirror of its own nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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