As in the raptures of love,
one wishes more hands with which to caress, more lips with which to
kiss, more eyes with which to see, more soul with which to worship;
spreading ourselves out in nature, with a joyful and delirious abandon,
we regretted that our eyes could not penetrate to the innermost parts of
the rocks, to the bottom of the sea, to the end of the heavens, in order
to see how the stones grow, how the breakers are made, how the stars are
lighted; we regretted that our ears could not catch the rumour of the
fermentation of the granite in the bowels of the earth, could not hear
the sap circulate in the plants and the coral roll in the solitudes of
the ocean. And while we were under the spell of that contemplative
effusion, we wished that our souls, radiating everywhere, might live all
these different lives, assume all these different forms, and, varying
unceasingly, accomplish their metamorphoses under an eternal sun!
But man was made to enjoy each day only a small portion of food,
colours, sounds, sentiments and ideas. Anything above the allotted
quantity tires or intoxicates him; it becomes the idiocy of the drunkard
or the ravings of the ecstatic.
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