hapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know
their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand
their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful
the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of
passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect--to observe
where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in
unison, and at what point they were at discord--there was a delight in
that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a
price for any sensation.

He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his
brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical
words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to
this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the
lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something.
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to
the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the
veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly
of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and
the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and
assumed the office of art; was indeed, in its way, a real work of art,
Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or
sculpture, or painting.

Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was
yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was
becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his
beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It
was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one
of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be
remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose
wounds are like red roses.

Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was
animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.
The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say
where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the physical impulse began? How
shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And
yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools!
Was the soul a sh