Think of all these things and then form some notion of what it is the thoughts of the great masters can do with the soul. Why, why is it not better known, this thing which is, indeed, knowledge and revelation itself? Why does it not reign over the empires, this which is sovereignty, grandeur, majesty? Why is it not more ardently invoked in the hour of crisis, this that teaches, equally well, fruitful doubt and serene resolution? II True, he who says ecstatically, “The world is governed by love, goodness, generous passions,” surrenders himself to a childish error. But he who cries, “The whole world is enslaved by egoism, violence and base passions,” speaks foolishly. As we look about us, we might perhaps imagine that from one or the other of these two moral attitudes there is no escape. Must we believe that the spirit of system has such an irresistible hold over everyone who sets about the business of living? The world! The world! It is much more beautiful and complex than that. It always upsets our prearrangements, and that is why we cherish it so dearly. But we also love to foresee things, and system seems to arrange them so that we can. What does it signify in a world that is capable of everything? Amid the evil and the mediocre there will always shine forth consolingly something noble, something wondrous. Is it not shameful to predict the basest things so glibly only to close our eyes the more obstinately before the beauty that is unknown and unforeseen? I assure you, in spite of all, that two lines of music can turn a multitude back and agitate the deepest springs of its behavior. If the miracle does not result from harmonious sounds, it will be borne, perhaps, of ten warm, rhythmical words, or the sight of a statue or the evocation of an image. The worship of immediate realities leads us to those easy victories that intoxicate the coarse spirits. At times it results in irreparable disasters, for it inclines us to misprize those secret and delicate things that pave the way for the soul’s most daring flights and ventures. Some other time I shall tell the story of the general who, in order to allay the grievances of his mutinous troops, offered them a cask of wine and, thanks to this blunder, suffered a defeat. People who reason in a wholesale fashion get along successfully from day to day till the hour when a tiny error destroys their success forever. III If the thoughts of great men no longer cause miracles it is because they are too little understood, or are misunderstood, or are purposely distorted. You are mistaken if you think they are powerless because they are beautiful.