find an important contract and contradiction. write a short analysis

the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually in- creased, I brought my work near to a conclusion. The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage: but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which made me ne- glect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them; and I well remembered the words of my father: "I know that while you are pleased with yourself, you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must par- don me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected." I knew well, therefore, what would be my father's feelings; but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loath- some in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that re- lated to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed. I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice, or faultiness of my part; but I am now con- vinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to al- low passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tend- ency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man al- lowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquil- lity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved