"When first I found myself thus upon the world, I was full of hope to
find an answer to the mystery. But the many fellow-beings I met upon
my road were as profitless as my companions in the coach. They could
not explain me, they could not explain the world or themselves, and
in the midst of teeming knowledges they were obliged to confess one
ignorance; among the myriad objects which they could explain they had
to acknowledge a whole universe of the inexplicable. I said to them,
'What is all your knowing worth beside the terrible burden of your
ignorance, and what are things that you can explain compared with
those that are inexplicable?'
"But I found these people proud of their little knowledges, and of the
matters they could explain. They were not even startled when I called
upon them to remember the great volcano of ignorance, on the slopes of
which they were building their little palaces.
"First I despised them, and then I loved them. But I shuddered at the
thought that I, an unknown person, unknown to myself and unrecognised
by a God, should love people equally unknown--a shadow loved other
shadows, and like a shadow I trembled.
"When I learned to love, I felt like a god--just as when the sun
learned to warm, he knew that he was a sun. I became like a sun over a
little world, and people who did not understand basked in my light and
heat.
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