of this idea led me to such vagaries as, for instance, turning sharply
round, in the hope that by the suddenness of the movement I should come
in contact with the void which I believed to be existing where I myself
purported to be!

What a pitiful spring of moral activity is the human intellect! My
faulty reason could not define the impenetrable. Consequently it
shattered one fruitless conviction after another--convictions which,
happily for my after life, I never lacked the courage to abandon as soon
as they proved inadequate. From all this weary mental struggle I derived
only a certain pliancy of mind, a weakening of the will, a habit
of perpetual moral analysis, and a diminution both of freshness of
sentiment and of clearness of thought. Usually abstract thinking
develops man's capacity for apprehending the bent of his mind at certain
moments and laying it to heart, but my inclination for abstract thought
developed my consciousness in such a way that often when I began to
consider even the simplest matter, I would lose myself in a labyrinthine
analysis of my own thoughts concerning the matter in question. That is
to say, I no longer thought of the matter itself, but only of what I was
thinking about it. If I had then asked myself, "Of what am I thinking?"
the true answer would have been, "I am thinking of what I am thinking;"
and if I had further asked myself, "What, then, are the thoughts of
which I am thinking?" I should have had to reply, "They are attempts
to think of what I am thinking concerning my own thoughts"--and so on.
Reason, with me, had to yield to excess of reason. Every philosophical
discovery which I made so flattered my conceit that I often imagined
myself to be a great man discovering new truths for the benefit of
humanity. Consequently, I looked down with proud dignity upon my
fellow-mortals. Yet, strange to state, no sooner did I come in contact
with those fellow-mortals than I became filled with a stupid shyness of