2_nd May_ 1892.
There are many paradoxes in the world and one of them is this, that
wherever the landscape is immense, the sky unlimited, clouds intimately
dense, feelings unfathomable--that is to say where infinitude is
manifest--its fit companion is one solitary person; a multitude there
seems so petty, so distracting.
An individual and the infinite are on equal terms, worthy to gaze on one
another, each from his own throne. But where many men are, how small both
humanity and infinitude become, how much they have to knock off each
other, in order to fit in together! Each soul wants so much room to expand
that in a crowd it needs must wait for gaps through which to thrust a
little craning piece of a head from time to time.
So the only result of our endeavour to assemble is that we become unable
to fill our joined hands, our outstretched arms, with this endless,
fathomless expanse.