Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/28

18 The girl thinker, lost in meditation in her little cell, while outside the din and roar of the mighty city were lulled for awhile, actually hit upon one of those truths which we are wont to consider as the mature fruit and last result of Goethe's philosophy of life. It is not knowledge or power or literary fame that this child of the Seine asks for (though they were all within reach of her); no, what she would learn is the art to live—that most difficult of all the arts, according to the author of Faust. For in 1772, we hear the humble enameller's daughter writing: "Let us endeavour to know ourselves; let us not be that factitious thing which can only exist by the help of others. Let us be ourselves. Soyons nous." Here we have the note of the highest originality—of genius. Instead of a slavish following of custom, instead of trying to digest the old dough of superannuated ideas, which has spoilt the digestion of so many generations, let us dare to solve the problems of life in our own way and day; let us try and see for ourselves, not take it for granted that all our thinking has been done for us by our ancestors. If in these thoughts of the young student there is something of the lofty calm of the sage, there is likewise a tone of practical sagacity and daring, indicative of a nature eminently fitted for mixing in and controlling affairs.

How far Sophie Cannet herself may have been able to enter into her friend's abstract reasonings we have but little means of ascertaining; but from many allusions in these letters we infer that she was of a serious turn of mind, and fond of keeping pace with the studies of Manon, who in the course of a year or two outsped her, however, so completely, that she gave up the attempt. Sophie, moreover, was not free to