I found myself
envious and revengeful and conceited. I discovered that I looked
down on people whom I thought less clever than myself. Once I caught
myself scorning a young fellow to whose disadvantage I knew nothing,
except that God had made him handsome enough for a woman. All at
once one day, with a sickening conviction it came upon me--with one
of those sudden slackenings of the cord of self-consciousness, in
which it doubles back quivering, and seems to break, while the man
for an instant beholds his individuality apart from himself, is
generally frightened at it, and always disgusted--a strange and indeed
awful experience, which if it lasted longer than its allotted moment,
might well drive a man mad who had no God to whom to offer back his
individuality, in appeal against his double consciousness--it was in
one of these cataleptic fits of the spirit, I say, that I first saw
plainly what a contemptible little wretch I was, and writhed in the
bright agony of conscious worthlessness.
"I now concluded that I had been nothing but a pharisee and a
hypocrite, praying with a bad heart, and that God saw me just as
detestable as I saw myself, and despised me and was angry with me.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125