ontemporary European thought"; but
I cannot bring myself to believe that these individuals do not
voluntarily close their eyes to the grand problem of existence and that,
in endeavouring to stifle this feeling of the tragedy of life, they
themselves are not living a lie.

The foregoing reflections are a kind of practical summary of the
criticism developed in the first six chapters of this treatise, a kind
of definition of the practical position to which such a criticism is
capable of leading whosoever will not renounce life and will not
renounce reason and who is compelled to live and act between these upper
and nether millstones which grind upon the soul. The reader who follows
me further is now aware that I am about to carry him into the region of
the imagination, of imagination not destitute of reason, for without
reason nothing subsists, but of imagination founded on feeling. And as
regards its truth, the real truth, that which is independent of
ourselves, beyond the reach of our logic and of our heart--of this truth
who knows aught?

FOOTNOTES:

[31] See Troeltsch, _Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kultur
der Gegenwart_ series.

[32] _Die Analyse der Empfindigungen und das Verhaeltniss des Physischen
zum Psychischen_, i., Sec. 12, note.

[33] I have left the original expression here, almost without
translating it--_Existents-Consequents_. It means the existential or
practical, not the purely rational or logical, consequence. (Author's
note.)

[34] Albrecht Ritschl: _Geschichte des Pietismus_, ii., Abt. i., Bonn,
1884, p. 251.

[35] Thou art the cause of my suffering, O non-existing God, for if Thou
didst exist, then should I also really exist.

VII

LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY

CAIN: Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn
To anticipate my immortality.

LUCIFER: Thou didst before I came upon thee.

CAIN: How?

LUCIFER: By suffering.

BYRON: _Cain_, Act II., Scene I.

The most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers of
mine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent of
disillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine
against death, for it is death's brother.

_Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte
Ingenero la sorte_,

as Leopardi sang.

Love seeks with fury, through the medium of the beloved, something
beyond, and sinc