What I lack
above all things is character, will, individuality. But, as always
happens, the appearance is exactly the contrary of the reality, and my
outward life the reverse of my true and deepest aspiration. I whose
whole being--heart and intellect--thirsts to absorb itself in reality,
in its neighbor man, in nature and in God, I, whom solitude devours and
destroys, I shut myself up in solitude and seem to delight only in
myself and to be sufficient for myself. Pride and delicacy of soul,
timidity of heart, have made me thus do violence to all my instincts and
invert the natural order of my life. It is not astonishing that I should
be unintelligible to others. In fact I have always avoided what
attracted me, and turned my back upon the point where secretly I desired
to be.
"Deux instincts sont en moi: vertige et deraison;
J'ai l'effroi du bonheur et la soif du poison."
It is the Nemesis which dogs the steps of life, the secret instinct and
power of death in us, which labors continually for the destruction of
all that seeks to be, to take form, to exist; it is the passion for
destruction, the tendency toward suicide, identifying itself with the
instinct of self-preservation. This antipathy toward all that does one
good, all that nourishes and heals, is it not a mere variation of the
antipathy to moral light and regenerative truth? Does not sin also
create a thirst for death, a growing passion for what does harm?
Discouragement has been my sin.
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