Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/76

40 awe. Here, as in all things. we may say: Pudenda origo! (How humble the origin!)

‘’How many forces nowadays make up a thinker!’’—To alienate oneself from sensual contemplation, to raise oneself to abstract ideas,—this, formerly, was felt as an exaltation: we cannot now quite enter into thesefeelings. The revelling in the most shadowy similes and images, the sport with those invisible, inaudible, imperceptible beings, was felt as a life in another, a higher world, springing up from the utter contempt of this perceptible, seductive and wicked world of ours.“These abstract ideas no longer mislead, but they may lead us,"—thus they spoke and took their upward flight.Not the contents of such intellectual sports, but the sports themselves were considered “the higher things"in the ante-period of science. Hence Plato's admiration of dialectics and his enthusiastic belief in their necessary co-relation to the good and spiritualised man. Not only knowledge, but also the means of gaining knowledge, the conditions and operations which precede knowledge in man, have been singly and gradually discovered. And every time when it appeared as if the newly-discovered operation or the recently experienced condition were not means of perfect knowledge, but the very contents, purpose and sum total of all that is worth knowing.The thinker requires imagination, inspiration,