Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/52

12 castigations; not—to repeat it again and again—as a means of discipline and self-command or a longing for individiual happiness. It is a virtue, which should put the community into good odour with the evil gods, and steam up to them from their altars as an uninterupted propitiatory offering. All those intellectual leaders of nations, who were able to stir up the stagnant and prolific swamps of their customs, needed voluntary torture in addition to insanity to gain belief—especially and above all, as is always the case, belief in them-selves! The farther their intellect advanced on the new path, and consequently felt tormented by remorse and fears, the more savagely they rage against their own flesh, their own appetites and their own health, just as if they wished to compensate the divine being in case he should happen to be irritated by neglect of or opposition to old-established usages, or the intro-duction of new aims. Let us not to readily believe that we have now entirely freed ourselves from such a logic of sentiment! Let the most heroic souls examine themselves on this point. Every step, however small, in the province of free thought anl of an individually moulded life, had, at all times, to be taken at the cost of intellectual and corporal tortures; not only the advance-ment, nay, first of all the mere stepping about, the move-ments and clanges had to find their victims, innumerable martyrs throughout the many thousands of long years,in which paths have been benten and foundation stones