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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: will. But neither his knowledge, nor his actions, nor his will, had
found direction. He had fled from social life from necessity; as a
great criminal seeks the cloister. Remorse, that virtue of weak
beings, did not touch him. Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins
again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all. But in traversing
the world, which he made his cloister, Wilfrid had found no balm for
his wounds; he saw nothing in nature to which he could attach himself.
In him, despair had dried the sources of desire. He was one of those
beings who, having gone through all passions and come out victorious,
have nothing more to raise in their hot-beds, and who, lacking
opportunity to put themselves at the head of their fellow-men to
Seraphita |
