A young man develops an all-consuming personal principle that drives his desire for solitary power and frames his moral thought. He fixes on wealth as a subtle instrument to secure the inward consciousness of strength, imagining possession and eventual renunciation of riches as proof of superiority. The narrative follows his youthful intellectual pride, social rebellion, and emotional immaturity, portraying how theoretical ideas collide with concrete actions and how self-love, ambition, and tentative turns toward religious and ethical reflection shape his search for identity.