ere it is open to a foolish reader to
envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him,
instead of envying that mighty power of phantasy which was capable
of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and
beautiful.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Clemens Alex. Strom. II., 21.]

In the same way, a person of melancholy temperament will make a scene
in a tragedy out of what appears to the sanguine man only in the light
of an interesting conflict, and to a phlegmatic soul as something
without any meaning;--all of which rests upon the fact that every
event, in order to be realized and appreciated, requires the
co-operation of two factors, namely, a subject and an object, although
these are as closely and necessarily connected as oxygen and hydrogen
in water. When therefore the objective or external factor in an
experience is actually the same, but the subjective or personal
appreciation of it varies, the event is just as much a different one
in the eyes of different persons as if the objective factors had not
been alike; for to a blunt intelligence the fairest and best object in
the world presents only a poor reality, and is therefore only poorly
appreciated,--like a fine landscape in dull weather, or in the
reflection of a bad _camera obscura_. In plain language, every man
is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness, and cannot
directly get beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his
own skin; so external aid is not of much use to him. On the stage, one
man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant or a soldier or
a general, and so on,--mere external differences: the inner reality,
the kernel of all these appearances is the same--a poor player, with
all the anxieties of his lot. In life it is just the same. Differences
of rank and wealth give every man his part to play, but this by no
means implies a difference of inward happiness and pleasure; here,
too, there is the same being in all--a poor mortal, with his hardships
and troubles. Though these may, indeed, in every case proceed from
dissimilar causes, they are in their essential nature much the same in
all their forms, with degrees of intensity which vary, no doubt, but
in no wise correspond to the part a man has to play, to the presence
or absence of position and wealth. Since everything which exists or
happens for a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it
alone, the most essential thing for a man is the