LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

but only what has long been part of us. We have already had to
think anew so many concepts of motion, we shall also learn
gradually to realize that it is out of mankind that what we call
destiny proceeds, not into them from without. Only because so
many did not absorb their destinies and transform these within
themselves as long as they lived in them, they did not recognize
what went forth from them ; it was so alien to them that they
believed, in their bewildered terror, it must have just entered into
them, for they swore that they had never before found anything
similar in themselves. As we have long deceived ourselves about
the motion of the sun, so we still continue to deceive ourselves
about the motion of that which is to come. The future stands
firm, dear Herr Kappus, but we move about in infinite space.
How should we not find it difficult
And, to speak again of solitude, it becomes increasingly clear
that this is fundamentally not something that we can choose or
reject. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about it, and
pretend that it is not so. That is all. But how much better it is
to realize that we are thus, to start directly from that very point.
Then, to be sure, it will come about that we grow dizzy ; for
~ all the points upon which our eyes have been accustomed to rest
will be taken away from us, there is no longer any nearness, and
all distance is infinitely far. A man who was taken from his
study, almost without preparation and transition, and placed
upon the height of a great mountain range, would be bound to
feel something similar : an uncertainty without parallel, an aban-
donment to the unutterable would almost annihilate him. He
would imagine himself to be falling or fancy himself flung
outwards into space or exploded into a thousand pieces: what
a monstrous lic his brain would have to invent in order to
retrieve and explain the condition of his senses. So all distances,
all measures are changed for the man who becomes solitary ;
many of these changes take effect suddenly, and, as with the
man on the mountain top, there arise singular fantasies and
strange sensations which seem to grow out beyond all endurance.

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