Woman (La femme) / from the French of J. Michelet ; translated from the last Paris ed. by J.W. Palmer.

  • Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman (La femme) / from the French of J. Michelet ; translated from the last Paris ed. by J.W. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    This book differs no less from the serious romances of our great Utopians—Saint-Simon, Fourier, and the rest. They invoke nature, but a very low order of it, in sympa- thy with the degradation of the times; and at once they put their trust in passional attraction, in our very inclina- tion towards that debased nature. In this age of stupen- dous effort, of heroic creation, they have tried to suppress effort; but with such a being as man, an energetic creator, an artist, effort is part of himself, and he is all the better for it. The popular moral instinct perceives this, and that ,is why those great thinkers have not succeeded in founding a school. Art, labor, and effort rule us all, and what we call nature in ourselves is, most frequently, of our own making, for we create ourselves day by day. I felt the truth of this while pursuing my anatomical studies last year, especially on the brain. The brain is manifestly the organ of work, the incarnation of our daily life. Hence its intense expression, and, if I may so say, its eloquence, in superior individuals; I do not hesitate to call it the most perfect flower, the most touching beauty in nature—affecting in the child, and often sublime in the man. Let them call this Realism; I am quite indifferent. There are two sorts of realism: the one vulgar and vacant—the other, through the Real, attaining the Idea, which is its essence and its highest truth, consequently its inherent nobilit}r. If pru- dery is shocked at my poetry of truth, the only pure poetry, it is of no consequence to me; when in IS Amour I broke down the stupid barrier which separates literature from the enlightenment of science, I did not ask the advice