But his real and inmost character
was a mystery even to himself, and this, because he felt so profoundly
the impossibility of sounding to the bottom any human heart. "A cloudy
veil stretches over the abyss of my nature," he writes, at one time. "I
have, however, no love of secrecy or darkness." At another time: "Lights
and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know
neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I look too closely
into them." A mind so conscious as his of the slight reality of
appearances would be dissatisfied with the few tangible qualities which
are all of himself that a man can discern: at the same time he would
hesitate to probe the deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning his
searching gaze too intently within, and thus becoming morbid. In other
persons, however, he could perceive a contour, and pursue his study of
investigation from without inward,--a more healthy method. His
_instinctive_ knowledge of himself, being brought into play, would
of course aid him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes to
light in his investigation of others. And it is perhaps this inability
to define their own natures, except by a roundabout method, which is the
creative impulse of all great novelists and dramatists. I doubt whether
many of the famous delineators of character could give us a very
distinct account of their own individualities; and if they did, it would
probably make them out the most uninteresting of beings.
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