60.

[XV]

(Pages)

There are, still, persons who see danger everywhere and in everything they do not know. They likewise do not fail to draw an unfavorable conclusion from the fact that some persons, on giving themselves over to these studies, have lost their reason.

How can sensible men see in this a serious objection? Does not the same thing happen with all intellectual preoccupations upon a weak brain? Who knows the number of madmen and maniacs that mathematical, medical, musical, philosophical, and other studies have already produced? And must we, for that reason, banish such studies?

What does that prove? In corporeal labors, the arms and the legs, which are the instruments of material action, are maimed; in the labors of the intelligence, the brain, which is the instrument of thought, is maimed.

But, because the instrument has been broken, it does not follow that the same has happened to the Spirit: it remains intact, and when it frees itself from matter it will enjoy no less the fullness of its faculties. He is, in his own way, as a man, a martyr to his labor. >>>