And
I can neither stifle these aspirations nor deceive myself as to the
possibility of satisfying them. I seem condemned to roll forever the
rock of Sisyphus, and to feel that slow wearing away of the mind which
befalls the man whose vocation and destiny are in perpetual conflict. "A
Christian heart and a pagan head," like Jacobi; tenderness and pride;
width of mind and feebleness of will; the two men of St. Paul; a
seething chaos of contrasts, antinomies, and contradictions; humility
and pride; childish simplicity and boundless mistrust; analysis and
intuition; patience and irritability; kindness and dryness of heart;
carelessness and anxiety; enthusiasm and languor; indifference and
passion; altogether a being incomprehensible and intolerable to myself
and to others!
Then from a state of conflict I fall back into the fluid, vague,
indeterminate state, which feels all form to be a mere violence and
disfigurement. All ideas, principles, acquirements, and habits are
effaced in me like the ripples on a wave, like the convolutions of a
cloud. My personality has the least possible admixture of individuality.
I am to the great majority of men what the circle is to rectilinear
figures; I am everywhere at home, because I have no particular and
nominative self. Perhaps, on the whole, this defect has good in it.
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