I did not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely understanding it.
"As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition.

I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener.

I sympathized with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none.
'The path of my departure was free,' and there was none to lament my annihilation.

My person was hideous and my stature gigantic.

What did this mean?
Who was I?
What was I?
Whence did I come?
What was my destination?
These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.
"The volume of Plutarch's Lives which I possessed contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics.