Note 3 — Chapter II · INDIVIDUALITY OR THE PERSONAL ELEMENT

“Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, of taste, differing from one person to another, create as many truths as there are men upon earth. And our minds, taking instructions from these organs, so diversely impressed, understand, analyse, judge, as if each of us belonged to a different race. Each one of us, therefore, forms for himself an illusion of the world; and the writer (the painter, too) has no other mission than to reproduce faithfully this illusion, with all the contrivances of art that he has learned and has at his command.”—Guy de Maupassant, Fortnightly Review, March, 1888, p. 366.