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186 LETTERS.
for knowledge. Man is the subject of which, before all
others, I shall treat. It is therefore man whom I must
study more closely. And I hope that Philosophy and His-
tory will lend me the key: Philosophy, by explaining to me
more in general his powers, his elements, his affinity with
heaven and with nature; and History, by showing me the
concrete man in his doings, in all his various stages of civ-
ilization, in different climates, in all the changing scenes
of life. By these means alone I hope that I shall be able
to judge rightly of man, such as he is at present, with refer-
ence both to the general tendency of the age, and to his
own individuality. Man and the State are surely not chil-
dren born to-day. Neither have they been created out of
nothing. Their inner organism has its root far back in
antiquity; their life derives its origin from a life which is
beyond all time and beyond all change. It is only by con-
templating them in their connection with an historical past
and a spiritual eternity, that one can rightly understand
them ; that is to say, understand their heart, their inmost,
intrinsic, real life, and that, as a moralist, one can hope to
effect any good for them. I should wish to tell you much
about all this, if I could come to you, or could transport
you hither, and place you on my sofa beside me; we would
then, if you did not get tired of me, have a long, long chat
about all this. A chat by correspondence about these
subjects is for me too heavy and too tedious ; therefore,
now to something else.
You have been in Norway, my dear Frances. You have
crossed the Swine Sound. You have there seen how the
hills, after having long followed you on the Swedish side in
bleak and barren undulations, suddenly rise on the borders
into mountains, both on the Swedish and on the Norwegian
frontier, their tops crowned with “ evergreen,” which they
wave, as it were, in mutual salutations, until at last they
sink quietly their brows into the sound, whose waters part,
and at the same time unite, the two countries. When I
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