Under its influence expression becomes
concentrated, colored, and strengthened, and by the power it has of
individualizing all it touches, it gives life and permanence to the
material on which it works. A writer of genius changes sand into glass
and glass into crystal, ore into iron and iron into steel; he marks with
his own stamp every idea he gets hold of. He borrows much from the
common stock, and gives back nothing; but even his robberies are
willingly reckoned to him as private property. He has, as it were,
_carte blanche_, and public opinion allows him to take what he will.
August 31, 1869.--I have finished Schopenhauer. My mind has been a
tumult of opposing systems--Stoicism, Quietism, Buddhism, Christianity.
Shall I never be at peace with myself? If impersonality is a good, why
am I not consistent in the pursuit of it? and if it is a temptation, why
return to it, after having judged and conquered it?
Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction? The deepest
reason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of life
seems to me a mere lure and deception. The individual is an eternal
dupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived by
hope. My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of
Schopenhauer.
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