62.
Avarice is to the intellect what sensuality is to the morals. It is an intellectual form of sensuality, inasmuch as it is the passion for the acquisition, the enjoyment in the possession, of a palpable, tangible, selfish pleasure; and it would have the same tendency to unspiritualise, to degrade, and to harden the higher faculties that a course of grosser sensualism would have to corrupt the lower faculties. Both dull the edge of all that is fine and tender within us.
63.
A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.
As what we call Genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonising with it the rest of the character.
“Though it burn our house down, who does not venerate fire?” says the Hindoo proverb.