Outside of the narrow circle of their own affairs, how many
of our anemic _bourgeoisie_ have the power to think for, themselves,
after they have reached the age of thirty? It would never cross their
minds; their thoughts are furnished to them like their provisions,
only more cheaply. For one or two cents a day they get them from their
papers. The more intelligent, who look for thought in books, do not
give themselves the trouble to seek it also in life, and think that
one is the reflection of the other. Like the prematurely aged, their
members become stiff, and their minds petrified.
In the great flock of those ruminating souls who fed on the past, the
group of bigots pinning its faith to the French Revolution was easily
distinguished. Among the backward _bourgeoisie_ they were reckoned
incendiary in former days;--about the time of the 16th of May, or a
little later. Like quinquagenarians grown stolid and settled, they
looked back with pride to their wild conduct, and lived on the memory
of the emotions of by-gone days. If their mirror showed them no
change, the world had altered around them without their suspecting it,
while they continued to copy their antiquated models. It is a curious
imitative instinct, a slavery of the brain, to remain hypnotised by
some point in the past, instead of trying to follow Proteus in his
course--the life of change.
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