MODERN EVIDENCE
731
and devoured by a single idea. You know that I am not destined
to hit the truth at its core, unifonnly surveying all that surrounds
it-no, somehow I always run to extremes. So I am now caught
up by the idea of civic virtue, of the pathos of truth and ·honor,
apart from which I can hardly respond to greatness anywhere.
Now you will understand why Timeleon, the Gracchuses and Cato
of Utica (not that red-headed brute the Elder) have quite eclipsed
Caesar and the Macedonian in my eyes. There has developed in
me a kind of wild, frenzied, fanatical love of freedom and the in–
dependent human personality, which are possible only in a society
founded on truth and virtue. In taking up Plutarch I imagined
that the Greeks would overshadow the Romans-it turned out quite
the other way. I raved over Pericles and Alcibiades, but the austere
grandeur of Timeleon and Phocion (those Greco-Romans) shut
off
from me the beautiful and graceful images of Athens' repre–
sentatives. In the Roman lives my soul floated as in an ocean.
Through Plutarch I came to understand much I had not grasped
before. A new humanity grew up on the soil of Greece and Rome.
But for them the Middle Ages would have achieved nothing. I
also understood the French revolution with its Roman pomp at
which I once laughed. I grasped, too, Marat's sanguinary love of
liberty, his sanguinary hatred of everything wishing to separate
itself from the brotherhood of man even by so much as an annorial
carriage. How fascinating
is
the world of antiquity. It contains the
germ of all that is great, noble and virtuous, for the basis of its
life was the pride of personality, inviolable personal dignity. Yes,
the Greek and Latin languages must be the cornerstone of all edu–
cation, the foundation of schooling.
Strange that my life is in sheer apathy, sloth, a stagnant mire.
But at the bottom somewhere there is a fiery sea. I was always
afraid that with the passing of the years my feelings would gradu–
ally die away-the exact opposite has happened. I am disenchanted
with everything, believe in no one, love nothing and nobody, still
the interests of prosaic life absorb me less and less, and I am be–
coming more and more a citizen of the universe. The mad craving
for love
is
devouring me inside, the yearning grows ever more per–
sistent and painful. That is myself, mine, and that alone. But I am
also strongly concerned with what
is
not mine. Human persoruiIity
