"Why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with
one another? There is no _result_ in it; it comes to nothing that one can
_do_. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!" He speaks often so, to his
poor discontented followers; he is like a piece of silent strength in the
middle of their morbid querulousness there.
And accordingly was there not what we can call a _faith_ in him, genuine so
far as it went? That this new enormous Democracy asserting itself here in
the French Revolution is an unsuppressible Fact, which the whole world,
with its old forces and institutions, cannot put down; this was a true
insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it,--a
_faith_. And did he not interpret the dim purport of it well? "_La
carriere ouverte aux talens_, The implements to him who can handle them:"
this actually is the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes whatever
the French Revolution or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, in his
first period, was a true Democrat.
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