Which may indeed be what to him seem most unreal— in short, every perplexity pumping the human imagination seemed to lie somewhat outside her own unswerving allegiance to a canon of time-honored rules.
But the concept of life as something whose purpose is concealed, of custom as something they may not allow for thought, of society as dedicated to a picture of itself that may be badly flawed, of an individual as real apart and beyond the social determinants defining him…
What is it he was? Was the idea he had for himself of lesser validity or of greater validity than someone else’s idea of what he was supposed to Be?
Can such thing even Be known?
There is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person. It’s more insidious even than what physical illness can do, because there is no morphine drip or spinal block or radical surgery to alleviate it…