Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/339

Rh useful to man; nay, there could not, there durst not be other things as well. Perhaps all this leads to the proposition that truth, as a whole and something coherent, existed only for sous who, like Aristotle, are both powerful and harmless, joyous and peaceful: just as none but these would be capable of seeking them: for the others seck remedies for themselves, however proud they may be of their intellect and its freedom, they do not seek for truth. Hence it comes that these others take so little genuine delight in science, but charge it with coldness, dryness, and inhumanity. Such is the opinion of the sick about the games of the healthy. Even the Greek gods were unable to give comfort ; when at length all the Greek world was stricken down with sickness, it soon was a reason for the destruction of their gods. —Through mistaken opinions on their descent, their uniqueness, their mission, and through claims based on these mistaken opinions, mankind have exalted and again and again “excelled themselves": but through these same errors the world has been filled with infinite suffering, mutual persecution, suspicion, misunderstanding, and even greater individual misery. Men have turned into suffering beings in consequence of their morals; and the sum total of their purchase is a feeling of being really too good and too