"
The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the
object of his confreres' jealousy, the victim of the cabal, the despised
of the men of power; but of being judged by fools. Fools go far
sometimes, particularly when bigotry is added to ineptitude, and to
ineptitude the spirit of vengeance. The further great misfortune of a
man of letters is that ordinarily he is unattached. A bourgeois buys
himself a small position, and there he is backed by his colleagues. If
he suffers an injustice, he finds defenders at once. The man of letters
is unsuccoured; he resembles a flying-fish; if he rises a little, the
birds devour him; if he dives, the fish eat him.
Every public man pays tribute to malignity, but he is paid in honours
and gold.
_METAMORPHOSIS_, _METEMPSYCHOSIS_
Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world
is covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where
everything has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to
another? An almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes
a butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird;
water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash;
everything in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people
attributed to souls, which were regarded as light figures, what they saw
in more gross bodies.
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