i see this passafe from "lucile" by owen meredith as showing the process by which traits get consigned to the shadow. it may also show the beginning of vargrave's individuation process.
>"Both brilliant and brittle, both bold and unstable,
> Indecisive yet keen, Alfred Vargrave seem'd able
> To dazzle, but not to illumine mankind.
> A vigorous, various, versatile mind;
> A character wavering, fitful, uncertain,
> As the shadow that shakes o'er a luminous curtain,
> Vague, flitting, but on it forever impressing
> The shape of some substance at which you stand guessing:
> When you said, "All is worthless and weak here," behold!
> Into sight on a sudden there seem'd to unfold
> Great outlines of strenuous truth in the man:
> When you said, "This is genius," the outlines grew wan,
> And his life, though in all things so gifted and skill'd,
> Was, at best, but a promise which nothing fulfill'd.
> VI.
> In the budding of youth, ere wild winds can deflower
> The shut leaves of man's life, round the germ of his power
> Yet folded, his life had been earnest. Alas!
> In that life one occasion, one moment, there was
> When this earnestness might, with the life-sap of youth,
> Lusty fruitage have borne in his manhood's full growth;
> But it found him too soon, when his nature was still
> The delicate toy of too pliant a will,
> The boisterous wind of the world to resist,
> Or the frost of the world's wintry wisdom.
> He miss'd
> That occasion, too rathe in its advent.
> Since then,
> He had made it a law, in his commerce with men,
> That intensity in him, which only left sore
> The heart it disturb'd, to repel and ignore.
> And thus, as some Prince by his subjects deposed,
> Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed,
> In resigning the power he lack'd power to support
> Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court,
> In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal'd
> To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd
> In the instincts and feelings belied by his words.
> Words, however, are things: and the man who accords
> To his language the license to outrage his soul,
> Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control.
> And, therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day
> The light code proclaim'd on his lips to obey;
> And, the slave of each whim, follow'd wilfully aught
> That perchance fool'd the fancy, or flatter'd the thought.
> Yet, indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth,
> Vast, vague aspirations, the powers of his youth,
> Lived and breathed, and made moan—stirr'd themselves—strove to start
> Into deeds—though deposed, in that Hades, his heart."
