The whole misfortune of beings like
me is their isolation. What erroneous ideas have our novelists, and
for the matter of that even our physiologists, about the decaying
races. They fancy that inward incapacity must invariably correspond
with physical deterioration, small build, weak muscles, anaemic brain,
and weak intelligence. This may be the case now and then, but
to regard it as a general principle is a mistake and a pedantic
repetition of the same thing over and over again. The descendants of
worn-out races have no lack of vital powers, but they lack harmony
among these powers. I myself am physically a powerful man, and never
was a fool. I knew people of my sphere built like Greek statues,
clever, gifted, and yet they did not know how to fit themselves into
life, and ended badly, exactly through that want of even balance in
their otherwise luxuriant vital powers. They exist among us as in a
badly organized society where nobody knows where the rights of the
one begin and those of another cease. We live in anarchy, and it is a
known fact that in anarchy society cannot exist. Each of the powers
drags its own way, often pulling all the others with it; and this
produces a tragic exclusiveness. I am now suffering from this
exclusiveness, by reason of which nothing interests me beyond Aniela,
nothing matters to me, and there is nothing else to which I can
attach my life.
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