Volume Ii Part 2 (2/2)

18.

THREE VARIETIES OF THINKERS.-There are streaming, flowing, trickling mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the water-in other words, by the elements in them that are not water.

19.

THE PICTURE OF LIFE.-The task of painting the picture of life, often as it has been attempted by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational.

Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures of one life only-their own-have come into being, and indeed no other result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a _definite object_.

20.

TRUTH WILL HAVE NO G.o.dS BEFORE IT.-The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

21.

WHERE SILENCE IS REQUIRED.-If we speak of freethinking as of a highly dangerous journey over glaciers and frozen seas, we find that those who do not care to travel on this track are offended, as if they had been reproached with cowardice and weak knees. The difficult, which we find to be beyond our powers, must not even be mentioned in our presence.

22.

_Historia in Nuce._-The most serious parody I ever heard was this: ”In the beginning was the nonsense, and the nonsense was with G.o.d, and the nonsense was G.o.d.”(4)

23.

INCURABLE.-The idealist is incorrigible: if he be thrown out of his Heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of h.e.l.l. Disillusion him, and lo! he will embrace disillusionment with no less ardour than he recently embraced hope. In so far as his impulse belongs to the great incurable impulses of human nature, he can bring about tragic destinies and later become a subject for tragedy himself, for such tragedies as deal with the incurable, implacable, inevitable in the lot and character of man.

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