Age enfeebles character; it is a tree that produces only degenerate
fruit, but the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and
covered with moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear
tree. If one could change one's character, one would give oneself one,
one would be master of nature. Can one give oneself anything? do we not
receive everything? Try to animate an indolent man with a continued
activity; to freeze with apathy the boiling soul of an impetuous fellow,
to inspire someone who has neither ear nor taste with a taste for music
and poetry, you will no more succeed than if you undertook to give sight
to a man born blind. We perfect, we soften, we conceal what nature has
put in us, but we do not put in ourselves anything at all.
One says to a farmer: "You have too many fish in this pond, they will
not prosper; there are too many cattle in your meadows, grass lacks,
they will grow thin." It happens after this exhortation that the pikes
eat half my man's carp, and the wolves the half of his sheep; the rest
grow fat. Will he congratulate himself on his economy? This countryman,
it is you; one of your passions has devoured the others, and you think
you have triumphed over yourself. Do not nearly all of us resemble that
old general of ninety who, having met some young officers who were
debauching themselves with some girls, says to them angrily: "Gentlemen,
is that the example I give you?"
_CHARLATAN_
The article entitled "Charlatan" in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" is
filled with useful truths agreeably presented.
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