THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

was fluent in it. In July he went to Norway where he was
sad and introspective. Gloom settled more and more heavily
on him as the year advanced towards the final struggle. There
was a «returning sadness and melancholy». «I am like a fish
in an aquarium», he wrote, «separated from the great ocean
by strong glass». He longed for the solace of a life with
Fernande and the intellectual ease of broad, general, abstract
studies. Though he must have a career
money doesn't mean anything to me. I am interested in the universal,
the good of all. In business it is necessary to defend one's own interest
to the detriment of those of one's neighbours. Without doubt I like
the advantages of fortune, natural advantages, but I cannot see in
them any claim to glory for me.
The grandiose picture he had had of the law in his younger,
more innocent days of unconfined speculation was replaced by
another — «what a horror I have of this law, of these particulars,
so dead, so detailed*. But drawing himself forward
on what he described as the knees of his «black pessimism»,
almost consumed by his belief in «the final uselessness of
effort», feeling himself no more than the square root of a soul
divided by zero, he brought himself to sit for his final examinations
and to make a decision to begin a legal career after
he left the University, to go to the Palais de Justice and
become, as he had planned years earlier, a lawyer. Picard as
so often before, was the determining influence. «Come to the
bar», said Picard, «the bar isn't the law, but there is there
an elite, a great confraternity and agreement on great principles.
Listen for your 'voice' there». In October 1890, , his
Doctoral en Droit completed he became a stagiaire, an articled
clerk, to Picard. On December 9, 1890 after so many years of
courtship, he married Fernande. In the New Year of 1891,
twenty three years old, he began his career in the world as
business-man and lawyer according to the resolutions he had
taken as a youth.
FOOTNOTES
1. The formal documentation of Otlet's family is available in a number of
legal documents, the most important of which is that related to Otlet's
divorce in 1908. This may be described as Etude de Maitre Taymans,
notaire. De la l*-4 comparition 14 Avril 1908—15 Janvier 1909:
Demandes de Divorce, par M. & Mme. Otlet-Gloner. In this document
are set out a detailed evaluation of Otlet's household effects, his marriage
settlement, his sources of income, together with notarised documents
of birth for himself, his wife and children, of his marriage, and
of the birth and death of grandparents and so on.
2. The diary consists of seven volumes, each made up of 4 notebooks, each
notebook numbering 50 pages. There are also a number of notebooks not
part of volumes. On occasion, Otlet pasted into the notebooks pages of
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