Excerpt from Julius Caesar: A Study
We never see the world as it is. It takes the colour and mould of our own souls. Complete realism is impossible. For that which we see is ever tinged by that with which we see. Our medium is for us creative. Hence we are for ever seeing change, even when change there is none; nature moves with us like our shadow; and human nature, changeable though it is, becomes besides fickle with our moods. Were nature moveless as her rocks, still would she seem to follow our transformations, as we pass from gloom to sunshine, from twilight to deep night. The strong spirit is omnipotent over its own happiness or woe; for it can see the gleaming sunlight behind the darkest cloud. The weak heart lets itself be crushed not by its surroundings, but by its own tears and gloom.
Thus potent as the spirit is with the lights and shadows of the world, there are sure to be seasons and periods as there are days and nights in its history. The inexperienced, unburdened soul of childhood gives to its whole world the colour of its physical states, its bodily pains and anguishes, or its bodily pleasures and ecstasies; it takes little to cast it from noon into outer darkness. Youth is still full of all these quick transitions; its gloom and happiness are strong and sudden and soon erased from memory; no circumstance graves its characters deep across the nature. Its passions, its delights, its griefs, though less dependent on the state of body than in childhood, blaze out and as suddenly die down to embers.
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