that he would not create poisoned characters? The soul is blank paper! God writes on one side, and Satan on the other; but God and Satan are only symbols in this case. In fact, there is another hand; the world is that hand really. The world writes on the soul, good and bad people write on it, moments of happiness write there, suffering writes more enduringly than all. But there are souls like mussels. The mussel changes grains of sand, and the soul pain, into pearls; sadness and solitude are the means. But not always. It depends on the soul. Sadness and solitude sometimes conceal weariness, emptiness, and stupidity. These three full sisters like to dwell in palaces built of sadness and solitude, seeking that which they have never lost. It does not follow from this that there are no charms in solitude. Sadness has none, at least for a sad person. Solitude for the soul is something like a time of sleep for the body. Nay, more; that misty monad, the soul, seems to dissolve in solitude, to separate, to vanish, to cease its existence almost; words and thoughts end in that silent region; the soul is annihilated for a season, separates on all sides from its own centre. All this is called rest.
Solitude is the worst term that the human
