"Literature, literary
production, is in my eyes not distinct, or at least not separable,
from the rest of the man and his organization. I can enjoy a work, but
it is difficult for me to form a judgment on it independently of the
man himself; and I readily say, _as is the tree so is the fruit_.
Literary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study." This, of
course, he can apply but partially to the ancients; but with the
moderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is to know the
man who did it, to get at his primary organization, his interior
beginnings and proclivities; and to learn this, one of the best means
is, to make yourself acquainted with his race, his family, his
predecessors. "You are sure to recognize the superior man, in part at
least, in his parents, especially in his mother, the most direct and
certain of his parents; also in his sisters and his brothers,
even in his children. In these one discovers important features which,
from being too condensed, too closely joined in the eminent
individual, are masked; but whereof the basis, the _fond_, is found in
others of his blood in a more naked, a more simple state.
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