The
Latins like it better. To feel its charm one should listen to a
highly-cultivated Frenchman analysing himself for the benefit of an
intimate companion. Still, even Anglo-Saxons may try it with
advantage.
The branch of self-knowledge which is particularly required for the
solution of the immediate case of the plain man now under
consideration is not a very hard one. It does not involve the
recognition of crimes or even of grave faults. It is simply the
knowledge of what interests him and what bores him.
Let him enter upon the first section of it with candour. Let him be
himself. And let him be himself without shame. Let him ever remember
that it is not a sin to be bored by what interests others, or to be
interested in what bores others. Let him in this private inquiry give
his natural instincts free play, for it is precisely the gradual
suppression of his natural instincts which has brought him to his
present pass. At first he will probably murmur in a fatigued voice
that he cannot think of anything at all that interests him. Then let
him dig down among his buried instincts. Let him recall his bright
past of dreams, before he had become a victim imprisoned in the
eternal groove.
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