Shakespeare must have experienced this feeling often, and
Hamlet, I think, must express it somewhere. It is a _Doppelgaengerei_,
quite German in character, and which explains the disgust with reality
and the repugnance to public life, so common among the thinkers of
Germany. There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thus
folding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of one's
own individuality. Without grief, which is the string of this
venturesome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and the
chosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save for
gravitation, would never return from the empyrean.
How, then, is one to recover courage enough for action? By striving to
restore in one's self something of that unconsciousness, spontaneity,
instinct, which reconciles us to earth and makes man useful and
relatively happy.
By believing more practically in the providence which pardons and allows
of reparation.
By accepting our human condition in a more simple and childlike spirit,
fearing trouble less, calculating less, hoping more. For we decrease our
responsibility, if we decrease our clearness of vision, and fear lessens
with the lessening of responsibility.
By extracting a richer experience out of our losses and lessons.
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