Be my friends, throw
on the wound in my soul your corrosive poisons, teach me to believe in
you."
While buried in these shadows I allowed my favorite poets and text-books
to accumulate dust. I even ground them under my feet in excess of wrath.
"You wretched dreamers," I said to them; "you who teach me only
suffering, miserable shufflers of words, charlatans if you knew the
truth, fools if you speak in good faith, liars in either case, who make
fairy tales of the human heart, I will burn every one of you!"
Then tears came to my aid and I perceived that there was nothing real but
my grief. "Very well," I cried, in my delirium, "tell me, good and bad
genii, counsellors for good or evil, tell me what to do! Choose an
arbiter and let him speak."
I seized an old Bible which lay on my table and read the first passage
that caught my eye.
"Reply to me, thou book of God," I said, "what word have you for me?" My
eye fell on this passage in Ecclesiastes, chapter ix:
I pondered all these things in my heart, and I sought diligently
for wisdom. There are just and wise men and their works are in the
hands of God; nevertheless man does not know whether he is worthy
of love or hatred.
And the future is unknown, for there is one event to the righteous
and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the
unclean; to him that sacrificeth and him that sacrificeth not.
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