Law, nothing
but cold, impassive, material law, is the root of things--lifeless
happily, so not knowing itself, else were it a demon instead of a
creative nothing. Endeavour is paralyzed in him. "Work for posterity,"
says he of the skyless philosophy; answers the man, "How can I work
without hope? Little heart have I to labour, where labour is so little
help. What can I do for my children that would render their life less
hopeless than my own! Give me all you would secure for them, and my life
would be to me but the worse mockery. The true end of labour would be,
to lessen the number doomed to breathe the breath of this despair."
Straightway he developes another and a deeper mood. He turns and regards
himself. Suspicion or sudden insight has directed the look. And there,
in himself, he discovers such imperfection, such wrong, such shame, such
weakness, as cause him to cry out, "It were well I should cease! Why
should I mourn after life? Where were the good of prolonging it in a
being like me? 'What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven
and earth!'" Such insights, when they come, the seers do their best, in
general, to obscure; suspicion of themselves they regard as a monster,
and would stifle.
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