To Will consumes us, and To have our Will destroys us, but
To Know steeps our feeble organisms in perpetual calm. In me Thought
has destroyed Will, so that Power is relegated to the ordinary
functions of my economy. In a word, it is not in the heart which can
be broken, or in the senses that become deadened, but it is in the
brain that cannot waste away and survives everything else, that I have
set my life. Moderation has kept mind and body unruffled. Yet, I have
seen the whole world. I have learned all languages, lived after every
manner. I have lent a Chinaman money, taking his father's corpse as a
pledge, slept in an Arab's tent on the security of his bare word,
signed contracts in every capital of Europe, and left my gold without
hesitation in savage wigwams. I have attained everything, because I
have known how to despise all things.
"My one ambition has been to see. Is not Sight in a manner Insight?
And to have knowledge or insight, is not that to have instinctive
possession? To be able to discover the very substance of fact and to
unite its essence to our essence? Of material possession what abides
with you but an idea? Think, then, how glorious must be the life of a
man who can stamp all realities upon his thought, place the springs of
happiness within himself, and draw thence uncounted pleasures in idea,
unspoiled by earthly stains.
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