In fact, even if you do not
succumb to this invasion of allies, you must not forget that, so far,
your adversary has not, so to speak, struck the decisive blow. If you
hold out still longer, your wife, having flung round you thread upon
thread, as a spider spins his web, an invisible net, will resort to
the arms which nature has given her, which civilization has perfected,
and which will be treated of in the next Meditation.
MEDITATION XXVI.
OF DIFFERENT WEAPONS.
A weapon is anything which is used for the purpose of wounding. From
this point of view, some sentiments prove to be the most cruel weapons
which man can employ against his fellow man. The genius of Schiller,
lucid as it was comprehensive, seems to have revealed all the
phenomena which certain ideas bring to light in the human organization
by their keen and penetrating action. A man may be put to death by a
thought. Such is the moral of those heartrending scenes, when in _The
Brigands_ the poet shows a young man, with the aid of certain ideas,
making such powerful assaults on the heart of an old man, that he ends
by causing the latter's death. The time is not far distant when
science will be able to observe the complicated mechanism of our
thoughts and to apprehend the transmission of our feelings.
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