Page:Poet Lore, volume 31, 1920.djvu/164

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Again he shows his independence and originality in the following excerpt (op. cit).

Hence it is perfectly safe as well as just to maintain that in the last analysis, Strindberg's egotism transcended his spirituality

Bjerre (7) voicing the theory of Adler is, therefore, essentially correct. Strindberg's conversion was, as I have already pointed out, to a large degree a strategic retreat, a compromise, a necessary modus vivendi, conditioned in part at least, by his inability as a neurotic to accept enigmatic problems of existence in a pragmatic spirit. Hence his flight into alchemy, magics, mysticism and occultism and then to the Cross, the everlasting symbol, as Bjerre said, of the inability on the part of the individual to cope with and master the problems of earthly life.

To Strindberg God became the greatest of all realities. To try to prove his existence was as foolish as to endeavor to prove a geometrical axiom. The men of science are rustic intelligences who confound intelligence with reason and whose discourses upon things spiritual are worthless (70 p. 1).

The consequence of ambition and of learning he characterizes as follows (op. cit. p. 250):