more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character
contained no pretension, but it sank deep. The disquisitions upon
death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not
pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards
the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely
understanding it.
As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and
condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely
unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I
was a listener. I sympathised with and partly understood them, but I
was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none.
The path of my departure was free, and there was none to lament my
annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did
this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to
solve them.
The volume of _Plutarch s Lives_ which I possessed contained the
histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book
had a far different effect upon me from the _Sorrows of Werter_. I
learned from Werter s imaginations despondency and gloom, but Plutarch
taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my
own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many
things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very
confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers,
and boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns and
large assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the
only school in which I had studied human nature, but this book
developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned
in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the
greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as
far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they
were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these
feelings, I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa,
Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The
patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a
firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had
been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should
have been imbued with different sensations.
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