Then first I knew
the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing
more.” “I have failed,” I said, “I have lost myself—would it had been my
shadow.” I looked round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned
that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it
is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to
hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that
will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer
of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or
dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a
moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my
life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at
least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a
mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to
arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of
the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from
its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the
record.
Self will come to life even in the slaying
of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will
emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn
gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling
child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?
—George MacDonald, Phantastes
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