Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/230

Rh cookery, is what first comes to mind when we see such a man as this subjective idealist of the emotions. You have only to get him to laugh heartily once or twice, and his Philistine narrowness can no longer content him. “Why is just my feeling worth so much?” he will say. And then he will wake up to observe that his ideal was all a bad dream; and that an experience has no more or less worth because it happens in connection with the decomposition of his particular brain-stuff. Faust discovered that, as we have seen; and so in time will any other sensible man. The real reason after all why Mephistopheles could not get Faust’s soul was that Faust could understand the Mephistophelean wit, which was throughout destructive of individualism. The sentimentalist who has no humor is once for all given over to the devil, and need sign no contract. He stares into every mirror that he passes, and, cursing the luck that makes him move so fast in this world, he murmurs incessantly, Verweile doch, du hist so schön. And so in the presence of the moral insight he is forthwith and eternally damned, unless some miracle of grace shall save him. It is noteworthy that one or two of our recent and yoimgest novelists in this country have gained a certain reputation by sentimental stories of collegiate and post-graduate life that precisely illustrate this simple-minded but abominable spirit. May these young authors repent while there is time, if indeed they can repent.

Less dangerous to genuine morality, and far higher in the scale of worth, is the Titanic form of individualism, the form that has given birth to such