... No, I am wrong;
it will have had its secret treasure, its sweetness, its reward. It will
have inspired a few affections of great price; it will have given joy to
a few souls; its hidden existence will have had some value. Besides, if
in itself it has been nothing, it has understood much. If it has not
been in harmony with the great order, still it has loved it. If it has
missed happiness and duty, it has at least felt its own nothingness, and
implored its pardon.
_Later on._--There is a great affinity in me with the Hindoo
genius--that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy, and speculative,
but destitute of ambition, personality, and will. Pantheistic
disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole,
womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action--these
are all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has been
developed by years and circumstances. Still the West has also had its
part in me. What I have found difficult is to keep up a prejudice in
favor of any form, nationality, or individuality whatever. Hence my
indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest, or opinions
of the moment. What does it all matter? _Omnis determinatio est
negatio_. Grief localizes us, love particularizes us, but thought
delivers us from personality.
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