Already I have a foretaste of that zero
in which all forms and all modes are extinguished. I see how we return
into the night, and inversely I understand how we issue from it. Life is
but a meteor, of which the whole brief course is before me. Birth, life,
death assume a fresh meaning to us at each phase of our existence. To
see one's self as a firework in the darkness--to become a witness of
one's own fugitive phenomenon--this is practical psychology. I prefer
indeed the spectacle of the world, which is a vaster and more splendid
firework; but when illness narrows my horizon and makes me dwell
perforce upon my own miseries, these miseries are still capable of
supplying food for my psychological curiosity. What interests me in
myself, in spite of my repulsions is, that I find in my own case a
genuine example of human nature, and therefore a specimen of general
value. The sample enables me to understand a multitude of similar
situations, and numbers of my fellow-men.
To enter consciously into all possible modes of being would be
sufficient occupation for hundreds of centuries--at least for our finite
intelligences, which are conditioned by time. The progressive happiness
of the process, indeed may be easily poisoned and embittered by the
ambition which asks for everything at once, and clamors to reach the
absolute at a bound.
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