Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/118

 It is a question which he often put to himself when remorse and self-reproach gnawed at his conscience and when he fancied himself scorned and persecuted by all his former friends. "Why are you so hated?" he asks himself in one of his dialogues, and this is his answer: "I could not endure to see mankind suffer, and so I said and wrote: 'Free yourselves, I shall help. * And so I said to the poor: 'Do not let the rich suck your blood.' And to woman: 'Do not let man oppress you.' And to the children: 'Do not obey your parents if they are unjust.' The consequences,—well, they are quite incomprehensible; for of a sudden I had both sides against me, rich and poor, men and women, parents and children; add to that sickness and poverty, disgraceful pauperism, my divorce, lawsuits, exile, loneliness, and now, to top the climax,—do you believe that I am insane?" From his ultra-subjective point of view, the explanation here given of the total collapse of his fortunes is fairly accurate, at least in the essential aspects. Still, many great men have been pursued by a similar conflux of calamities. Overwhelming misfortunes are the surest test of manhood. How high a person bears up his head under the blows of fate is the best gage of his stature.