Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/207

Rh are the actions of sympathy for others." This principle of the present moral fashion seems to me a social craving of cowardliness which disguises itself in this intellectual manner. This craving considers it its highest, first, and most important aim to free life from all the perils to which it was formerly exposed, and to make everybody, to the best of his ability, aid in this effort; hence only such actions as aim at the common security and sense of security of society deserve the predicate "good." How little can people nowadays rejoice in their own selves if such a tyranny of fear prescribes the highest moral law to them, if they, so yieldingly, allow themselves to be ordered to turn their eyes from above and around themselves, yet to have lynx-eyes for every distress and suffering elsewhere. Are we then, with our gigantic purpose of smoothing away every sharp edge and corner in life, not on a fair way of turning mankind into sand? Small, soft, round, infinite sand! Is this your ideal, ye heralds of “sympathetic affections". Meanwhile even that question remains unanswered, whether we sure of greater use to others by constantly and immediately relieving and helping them—which, at most, can be done only in a very superficial way, so as not to grow into a tyrannical meddling and transforming—or by transforming our own selves into something which the other beholds with pleasure, some thing that may be likened to a beautiful, quiet, secluded gullen protected by high walls against storms and the dust of the highway, but also provided with an open, hospitable gate.