" I looked
round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned
that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I
learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to
fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and
fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will
barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his
work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered,
or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to
set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became
my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain
attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in
my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a
mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another
self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from
the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self
must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a
winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record.
Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is
ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at
last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn
gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a
smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?
CHAPTER XXIII
"High erected thought, seated in a heart of courtesy.
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