Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/382

346 why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth ; enough, that it has a great power. But truth must be able to fight and face opponents, and we must be able periodically to rest from it in untruth ; else truth will grow uninteresting, powerless and stale, and end by making us thus. —Neither the things which we do to benefit ourselves nor those which we do to please ourselves, shall fetch us any moral praise, either from others or from ourselves. Among the educated classes it is in such cases considered the right thing not to take the things pathetically and to refrain from all pathetic feelings: the man who has adopted this line has retrieved. —What? Are you still in need of the stage? Are you still so young? Be wise, and seek tragedy and comedy where they are better acted, where the incidents are more interesting and more interested. Indeed, it is not easy in these cases to he merely a spectator—but learn it! And then you will have in almost all awkward and painful positions a little gate leading to joy and a refuge even then, when your own passions attack you. Open your stage-eye, that large, third eye which looks into the world through the other two,