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(now at the age of thirty-two) was not only ill, but self-distrustful—he scarcely knew whether he had a task any more or the right to one. And as a physician on occasion sends his patients into new surroundings, so he, physician and patient in one, now sends himself to a new climate, in both the spiritual and physical senses of that word. He had been living, he felt, in an atmosphere overcharged with idealism and emotion; a cold water-cure was necessary. He found himself with an uncommon desire to see men and their motives as they actually were. He also wanted to see himself more objectively—was ready to take sides against himself, if need be, and to be hard with himself; he had had his fill of illusions. Even the emotional attitude to objects in nature went against him. He understood the mental evolution of Sophocles—the aversion he in time acquired to pomp and show. In other words, the craving for knowledge, for a cool, clear view of things, became uppermost in him; ideals, ideal aims, great expectations took a subordinate place. "Unmercifully I strode over wished-for and dreamed-of things which up to that time my youth had loved, unmercifully I went on my way, the way of knowledge at any cost." "I took sides against myself, and for all that gave me pain and was hard."