Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/65

Rh that this kind of suffering is based on an error seems revolting to our feelings. Yes, there is the one supreme consolation that by our suffering we attest a "deeper world of truth," deeper than all the world outside, and we by far prefer to suffer and to feel ourselves above reality (through the conscionsness that, by this means, we come nearer to that "deeper world of truth"), to being free from suffering and thus without this sense of superiority. Hence it is pride and the accustomed mode of gratifying it which opposes the new compre-hension of morality. What force should we employ to do away with this brake? Greater pride? A new pride?

The contempt of causes, consequences and reality.—Unfortunate accidents which befall a community is, for instance, sudden storms, bad crops or plagues, lend all its members to suspect that some offences against custom have been committed, or that now practices will have to be invented to assuage a new demonic power and caprice. Hence this kind of suspicion and reflection shirks the very investigation into the true natural causes, and accepts the demonic cause as something understood. This is the one source of hereditary perversity in the human intellect; and the other source, which springs up by its side, is that, likewise on principle, people attached much less importance to the true natural conseqnences