_19th October 1894._
We know people only in dotted outline, that is to say, with gaps in our
knowledge which we have to fill in ourselves, as best we can. Thus, even
those we know well are largely made up of our imagination. Sometimes the
lines are so broken, with even the guiding dots missing, that a portion of
the picture remains darkly confused and uncertain. If, then, our best
friends are only pieces of broken outline strung on a thread of
imagination, do we really know anybody at all, or does anybody know us
except in the same disjointed fashion? But perhaps it is these very
loopholes, allowing entrance to each other's imagination, which make for
intimacy; otherwise each one, secure in his inviolate individuality, would
have been unapproachable to all but the Dweller within.
Our own self, too, we know only in bits, and with these scraps of material
we have to shape the hero of our life-story,--likewise with the help of
our imagination. Providence has, doubtless, deliberately omitted portions
so that we may assist in our own creation.