Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/46

10 their folly as to ask us to feel our very existence as a punishment. Surely the eduction of mankind, thus far, must have been in the hands of fantastic gaolers and hangmen.

Bearing of insanity on the history of morality.—If despite that terrible pressure of the morality of customs," under which all human communities for many centuries-previous to and during our era and, generally speaking, up to the present day, have groaned (for we are living in the small world of exceptions and, so to speak, in an evil zone),—if, I say, despite all this, now and deviating ideas, valuations, and tendencies again and again have come to the front; this has been accomplished in the companionship of a horrible escort : in nearly every instance it is insanity which has cleared the way for a new idea and broken the charm of a venerable custom and superstition. Do you understand why this had to be effected by insanity? Why by something in voice and gesture as horrid and incalculable as the demonic caprice of weather and sea, and, for this reason, inspiring similar dread and submissiveness? Why lay something, bearing the marks of utter involuntariness as visibly as the convulsions and froth of the epileptic, which seemed to stamp the insane as the mask and speaking-trumpet of a deity? Why by something that filled the very bearer of the new idea