duality quotes

• “It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature.”
• With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
• “I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”
• What would happen if each identity could be housed separately?

  Life would be relieved of unbearable burdens
• What is the relationship between the just and unjust identities in the text?

  The just is burdened by the unjust's actions
• What does the phrase "polar twins" refer to in the context?

  Conflicting aspects of human consciousness
• What is described as the "curse of mankind" in the text?

  The binding of conflicting identities together
• What does the author imply about the struggle within consciousness?

  It involves continuous conflict between identities
• How does the author describe the state of consciousness?

  As an agonized womb of struggling identities
• What is the ultimate question posed by the author regarding identities?

  How can they be dissociated?
• What does the author suggest about the aspirations and remorse of the just identity?

  They are burdensome due to the unjust identity
• What does the author mean by "delivered from the aspirations and remorse"?

  Freeing the unjust from moral burdens
• What is implied about the just identity's path?

  It is upward and secure when unburdened
• "And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself…This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.”