"The [Prussian] Officer was one of
those good souls who are by nature
framed to take hearty interest in all
that happens to others, or that others
achieve. His rank, while condemning
him to a hard and insolent calling, and
thus encasing him in a coarse shell,
had made him yet softer within. In a
strict service, where for years everything
had moved in the most rigid order,
where brazen necessity was the only
goddess worshipped, where justice
became harshness and cruelty, and the
conception of man and humanity completely
vanished, his good soul, which
in a free and independent life would
have revealed its beauty and found its
existence, was altogether repressed, his
feelings blunted and almost reduced to
ruin."—Goethe's Wilheim Meister.
Page:The Prime Minister by Hall Caine.djvu/192
