Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/310

274 performed in this direction ceased to be a sacrifice; it was tantamount to : "Everything for the sake of our pleasure." To demand that duty shoudl always be more or less a burden—as Kanthas it—is to demand: that it should never develop into a habit or custom: this demand savours of a slight residuum of ascetic cruelty. —It is a wellproven fact that human beings originate in the womb : nevertheless grown-up children, when standing at their mother's side, place the hypothesis in a most absurd light: it has all appearances against it. —Somebody has said that in his childhood he had entertained such a strong contempt for the capricious whims of the melancholy temperament that, until the time when he became a man, he was kept in ignorance about his own temperament, which, indeed, was melancholy. He declares this kind of ignorance to be most profitable. —True, he examines the matter from every side, and you think him to be a man of thorough