The universe is but
the kaleidoscope which turns within the mind of the so-called thinking
being, who is himself a curiosity without a cause, an accident conscious
of the great accident around him, and who amuses himself with it so long
as the phenomenon of his vision lasts. Science is a lucid madness
occupied in tabulating its own necessary hallucinations. The philosopher
laughs, for he alone escapes being duped, while he sees other men the
victims of persistent illusion. He is like some mischievous spectator of
a ball who has cleverly taken all the strings from the violins, and yet
sees musicians and dancers moving and pirouetting before him as though
the music were still going on. Such an experience would delight him as
proving that the universal St. Vitus' dance is also nothing but an
aberration of the inner consciousness, and that the philosopher is in
the right of it as against the general credulity. Is it not even enough
simply to shut one's ears in a ballroom, to believe one's self in a
madhouse?
The multitude of religions on the earth must have very much the same
effect upon the man who has killed the religious idea in himself. But it
is a dangerous attempt, this repudiation of the common law of the
race--this claim to be in the right, as against all the world.
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