Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 34

405.

PRAYER TO MANKIND.-"Forgive us our virtues"-so should we pray to mankind.

406.

THEY THAT CREATE AND THEY THAT ENJOY.-Every one who enjoys thinks that the princ.i.p.al thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the princ.i.p.al thing to it is the seed.-Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.

407.

THE GLORY OF ALL GREAT MEN.-What is the use of genius if it does not invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness of feeling that he no longer has need of genius?-To make themselves superfluous is the glory of all great men.

408.

THE JOURNEY TO HADES.-I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine.-May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters "eternal life," or indeed life at all?

PART II. THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.

_The Shadow_: It is so long since I heard you speak that I should like to give you an opportunity of talking.

_The Wanderer_: I hear a voice-where? whose? I almost fancied that I heard myself speaking, but with a voice yet weaker than my own.

_The Shadow_ (after a pause): Are you not glad to have an opportunity of speaking?

_The Wanderer_: By G.o.d and everything else in which I disbelieve, it is my shadow that speaks. I hear it, but I do not believe it.

_The Shadow_: Let us a.s.sume that it exists, and think no more about it. In another hour all will be over.

_The Wanderer_: That is just what I thought when in a forest near Pisa I saw first two and then five camels.

_The Shadow_: It is all the better if we are both equally forbearing towards each other when for once our reason is silent. Thus we shall avoid losing our tempers in conversation, and shall not at once apply mutual thumb-screws in the event of any word sounding for once unintelligible to us. If one does not know exactly how to answer, it is enough to say _something_. Those are the reasonable terms on which I hold conversation with any person. During a long talk the wisest of men becomes a fool once and a simpleton thrice.

_The Wanderer_: Your moderation is not flattering to those to whom you confess it.

_The Shadow_: Am I, then, to flatter?

_The Wanderer_: I thought a man's shadow was his vanity. Surely vanity would never say, "Am I, then, to flatter?"

_The Shadow_: Nor does human vanity, so far as I am acquainted with it, ask, as I have done twice, whether it may speak. It simply speaks.

_The Wanderer_: Now I see for the first time how rude I am to you, my beloved shadow. I have not said a word of my supreme _delight_ in hearing and not merely seeing you. You must know that I love shadows even as I love light. For the existence of beauty of face, clearness of speech, kindliness and firmness of character, the shadow is as necessary as the light. They are not opponents-rather do they hold each other's hands like good friends; and when the light vanishes, the shadow glides after it.

_The Shadow_: Yes, and I hate the same thing that you hate-night. I love men because they are votaries of life. I rejoice in the gleam of their eyes when they recognise and discover, they who never weary of recognising and discovering. That shadow which all things cast when the suns.h.i.+ne of knowledge falls upon them-that shadow too am I.

_The Wanderer_: I think I understand you, although you have expressed yourself in somewhat shadowy terms. You are right. Good friends give to each other here and there, as a sign of mutual understanding, an obscure phrase which to any third party is meant to be a riddle. And we are good friends, you and I. So enough of preambles! Some few hundred questions oppress my soul, and the time for you to answer them is perchance but short. Let us see how we may come to an understanding as quickly and peaceably as possible.

_The Shadow_: But shadows are more shy than men. You will not reveal to any man the manner of our conversation?

_The Wanderer_: _The manner_ of our conversation? Heaven preserve me from wire-drawn, literary dialogues! If Plato had found less pleasure in spinning them out, his readers would have found more pleasure in Plato. A dialogue that in real life is a source of delight, when turned into writing and read, is a picture with nothing but false perspectives.

Everything is too long or too short.-Yet perhaps I may reveal the _points on which_ we have come to an understanding?

_The Shadow_: With that I am content. For every one will only recognise your views once more, and no one will think of the shadow.

_The Wanderer_: Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Hitherto they have observed in my views more of the shadow than of me.

_The Shadow_: More of the shadow than of the light? Is that possible?

_The Wanderer_: Be serious, dear fool! My very first question demands seriousness.

1.

OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.-Probability, but no truth; the semblance of freedom, but no freedom-these are the two fruits by virtue of which the tree of knowledge cannot be confounded with the tree of life.

2.

THE WORLD'S REASON.-That the world is _not_ the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that _bit of the world_ which we know-I mean our human reason-is none too reasonable. And if _this_ is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. Here the conclusion _a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum_ holds good, and that with decisive force.