Chapter XXIV

I think that the infinite and mysterious charm that rests in the contemplation of a ship, especially of a vessel in motion, springs, in the first place, from regularity and symmetry (which are of the primordial needs of the human mind, as much as complexity and harmony)--and, secondly, from the successive multiplication and generation of all the curves and imaginary figures cut in space by the real elements of the object.

The poetic idea which this movement in lines produces is the hypothesis of a vast, immense, complex but eurythmic being, of a creature full of genius, suffering and sighing all human sighs and all human ambitions.

Civilized races, that always speak so stupidly of savages and barbarians, soon, as d'Aurevilly says, you will _no longer be good enough to be idolaters_. Stoicism, religion that has but one sacrament: suicide!

Conceive a canvas for a lyric or fairy buffoonery, for a pantomime, and transplant it into a serious novel. Bathe the whole in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere,--in the atmosphere of the _great days_. Let there be something soothing,--something even serene, in passion. Regions of pure poetry.

XXV

What is not a priesthood nowadays? Youth itself is a priesthood--so youth tells us.

Man, i.e., every one, is so naturally depraved that he suffers less from the universal abasement than from the establishment of a sensible hierarchy.