It is not often that the philosophic scoffers forget themselves for
others. Why should they? Self-devotion is a serious thing, and
seriousness would be inconsistent with their role of mockery. To be
unselfish we must love; to love we must believe in the reality of what
we love; we must know how to suffer, how to forget ourselves, how to
yield ourselves up--in a word, how to be serious. A spirit of incessant
mockery means absolute isolation; it is the sign of a thoroughgoing
egotism. If we wish to do good to men we must pity and not despise them.
We must learn to say of them, not "What fools!" but "What unfortunates!"
The pessimist or the nihilist seems to me less cold and icy than the
mocking atheist. He reminds me of the somber words of "Ahasverus:"
"Vous qui manquez de charite,
Tremblez a mon supplice etrange:
Ce n'est point sa divinite,
C'est l'humanite que Dieu venge!"
[Footnote: The quotation is from Quinet's "Ahasverus" (first published
1833), that strange _Welt-gedicht_, which the author himself described
as "l'histoire du monde, de Dieu dans le monde, et enfin du doute dans
le monde," and which, with Faust, probably suggested the unfinished but
in many ways brilliant performance of the young Spaniard,
Espronceda--_El Diablo Mundo_.]
It is better to be lost than to be saved all alone; and it is a wrong to
one's kind to wish to be wise without making others share our wisdom.
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