return; she did not take it
unkindly. "While life is sweeping us forward," she replied, "we fancy
that we are acting out our own impulses; we believe that we choose
ourselves what we will do, and what we will enjoy. But in fact, if we
look at it closely, our actions are no more than the plans and the
desires of the time which we are compelled to carry out."

"No doubt," said the Assistant. "And who is strong enough to withstand
the stream of what is around him? Time passes on, and in it, opinions,
thoughts, prejudices, and interests. If the youth of the son falls in
the era of revolution, we may feel assured that he will have nothing in
common with his father. If the father lived at a time when the desire
was to accumulate property, to secure the possession of it, to narrow
and to gather one's-self in, and to base one's enjoyment in separation
from the world, the son will at once seek to extend himself, to
communicate himself to others, to spread himself over a wide surface,
and open out his closed stores."

"Entire periods," replied Charlotte, "resemble this father and son whom
you have been describing. Of the state of things when every little town
was obliged to have its walls and moats, when the castle of the nobleman
was built in a swamp, and the smallest manor-houses were only accessible
by a draw-bridge, we are scarcely able to form a conception. In our
days, the largest cities take down their walls, the moats of the
princes' castles are filled in; cities are no more than great _places_,
and when one travels and sees all this, one might fancy that universal
peace was just established, and the golden age was before the door. No
one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open
country. There must be nothing to remind him of form and constraint, we
choose to be entirely free, and to draw our breath without sense of
confinement. Do you conceive it possible, my friend, that we can ever
return again out of this into another, into our former condition?"

"Why should we not?" replied the Assistant. "Every condition has its own
burden along with it, the most relaxed as well as the most constrained.
The first presupposes abundance, and leads to extravagance. Let want
reappear, and the spirit of moderation is at once with us again. Men who
are obliged to make use of their space and their soil, will speedily
enough raise walls up round their gardens to be sure of their crops and
plants. Out of this will