Flight from One's Self.—Those sufferers from intellectual spasms who are impatient towards themselves and look upon themselves with a gloomy eye—such as Byron or Alfred de Musset—and who, in everything that they do, resemble runaway horses, and from their own works derive only a transient joy and an ardent passion which almost bursts their veins, followed by sterility and disenchantment—how are they able to bear up! They would fain attain to something “beyond themselves.” If we happen to be Christians, and are seized by such a desire as this, we strive to reach God and to become one with Him; if we are a Shakespeare we shall be glad to perish in images of a passionate life; if we are like Byron we long for actions, because these detach us from ourselves to an even greater extent than thoughts, feelings, and works.

And should the desire for performing great deeds really be at bottom nothing but a flight from our own selves?—as Pascal would ask us. And indeed [pg 381] this assertion might be proved by considering the most noble representations of this desire for action: in this respect let us remember, bringing the knowledge of an alienist to our aid, that four of the greatest men of all ages who were possessed of this lust for action were epileptics—Alexander the Great, CÆsar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; and Byron likewise was subject to the same complaint.